Medicine and social services in the East and the West
Practice and Politics
I can vividly recall the years 1945-51, I spent in a mid sized town, called Gonda, in the eastern United Provinces (UP, since renamed Uttar Pradesh, the only state to retain its pre-independence abbreviation).
For most of the ailments, we used to a (Unani-Greek, the system was so called, recalling its Greek origin. The other system was called Ayurvedic indicating its origin from Vedic times of ancient India. The practitioners were called Veds), Hakeem (oriental medicine physician), who was my Nana’s friend. Once I developed Beri Beri (due to deficiency of vitamin B)
The Hakim sahib gave me a majoon (a sweetish gel like compound of indigenous medications-it is supposed to be very potent). *(A folklore runs thus. Nadir Shah, after sacking Delhi during the reign of one of the last Moghal emperors, Muhammad Shah Rangeela (dilettante), developed stomach upset. The royal Hakim prescribed a 'majoon’ with instructions to take one teaspoonful every four hours. Such was the terror of Nadir shah that the messenger dare not convey the instructions. He liked the taste and ate it all in one go saying that “this Halwa (dessert) is very tasty, bring some more”. The moral of the story is that what would kill the effete Moghal, would not harm the hardy Afghans at all).
I did not get better, so my mother insisted that I be taken to the Civil Hospital (every district had a government run hospital. The chief physician was called Civil surgeon, usually a physician of British origin, though in later years of the Raj a few Indians were appointed too. This hospital had 15-20 beds). A saw an *assistant surgeon (LMP), who duly prescribed vitamin B pills. I started getting better, but Hakim Sahib got the credit. ( I can’t recall if there were any private family practitioners in the town. The other place I lived in India was Jhansi, whose claim to fame is the legendary Jhansi ki Rani, who killed herself rather than surrender to the British when Indians lost the 1857 war of independence, a much larger cantonment town, where I was told a Bengali family practitioner had ‘saved’ my life when I was afflicted with typhoid fever at the age of 2-3).
The capital city Lucknow had a medical college offering a five year MBBS degree course. Agra and Allahabad, the other university towns, offered a three years LMP (licensed medical practitioner course
The popularity of the practitioners of indigenous medicine was attributable to long time practice and tradition, the scant number of practitioners of Western allopathic medicine, the conspicuously rare onset of side effects and tasty compounds that Hakims and Veds offered, in sharp contrast to the bitter allopathic mixtures and pills, especially Quinine for malaria.
Patients would have recourse to ‘Jarrah’ barbers, if they had an abscess, and to bone setters, in case of broken bones.
Allopathic hospitals had earned a bad name, and only very serious surgical cases were taken there, because anesthesia was very primitive, and antibiotics were still in the future (penicillin was discovered in 1941, Streptomycin in 1948. the only anti-bacterial medications were sulphonamides, which had a high allergic reaction rate). Blood and other intra-venous transfusions were virtually unknown, and if a patient survived surgery and anesthesia, the chances of succumbing to bio-chemical imbalance and infection were very high. People preferred to die at home, surrounded by near and dear ones.
Pakistan
This kind of situation obtained in Quetta, a cantonment town in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan too, which we migrated to in 1951, though the town boasted of several family practitioners. The hospital had some 50-60 beds.
I went to join the University of Karachi in 1954. Karachi, which had been a sleepy little city of less than a hundred thousand souls before WW II, had attained a degree of importance as a transit point for the British military and a small cantonment, a naval port and air force base had been built. It had a military hospital, in addition to the usual civil hospital. A medical school had been launched in 1945. It was not too long ago that Sindh had been separated from Bombay and accorded the status of a province, with Karachi as the capital city.
The city was divided into an upper class (British and a few homes of major landowners like Benazir Bhutto’s grandfather) seaside locality called Clifton, a Hindu Amil colony, a Parsi colony, a commercial area called Saddar, and a Bunder (port) Road which boasted of offices of commercial houses. Muslims, including Jinnah’s family lived in outskirts of the town in ramshackle buildings, surrounded by slums.
With the advent of independence and partition, non-Muslims left for India, taking 48 out of 50 medical students and all the staff. Muslims immigrants from India had to fill the vacuum, not just in the medical school, but all the offices, schools, colleges, businesses and services.
The city was overwhelmed by refugees and by the year 1954, the population had grown to over two million. People lived several families to a two bed-room apartment. These were the lucky ones. An estimated 50% of the population lived in mud huts. All public services-sanitary, water supply, health and housing broke down.
Vast majority of the population had no recourse, but to visit Hakims for minor as well as major illnesses.
India had inherited a more or less intact infra-structure, with skilled staff, academics, functioning universities, a well developed business class, finance houses, an industrial sector which had already started competing at the international level, and a vibrant political parties, with dynamic leadership supported and funded by the commercial and industrial class.
Pakistan, in stark contrast, was devoid of industry, business, finance, and skilled workers. As though that was not enough of a handicap, it was soon embroiled in an armed conflict with India.
The Indian government withheld Pakistan’s share of the assets, on the grounds that they will be used to finance the war in Kashmir. Pakistan was on the verge of collapse, and collapse it would have, but for a huge loan from the Nizam (ruler) of Hyderabad, the largest princely state in India, in area actually larger than France.
About the only source of foreign exchange Pakistan had was *Jute that East Bengal produced (Mills which processed raw Jute into fiber for making bags were located in Indian West Bengal. West Pakistan did produce high quality cotton, but all the mills had been owned by non-Muslims, and were dysfunctional. The Western wing also rich in wheat and rice, sufficient to feed twice as many people as lived in both wings at the time. But border with India was porous, and most of the grain was smuggled into India.
But the structural defect Pakistan suffered from was that the leadership of the Pakistan movement, barring Jinnah and a few of his expatriate followers consisted of the landowners of West Pakistan. True East Pakistan had a middle class, but the entire bureaucracy, higher judiciary, the officers of the military came from just two sources-the Punjab and the immigrants from what was India now (Pakistan inherited 83 senior civil servant, only was from Bengal, none from Sind, NWFP or Baluchistan. The same ratio held in judicial ranks. Among the senior army, Navy and air force officers, there was none from Bengal, Sind or Baluchistan, and only Ayub khan from the NWFP).
Jinnah combined the role of Marx, Lenin and Stalin for the country. He had excluded all but yes men from the government.
Jinnah had actually wanted entrenched guarantees for the rights of Muslims of India, and had endorsed the British offered plan for a con-federal India, with the center only holding control over foreign affairs, defense, currency and communications. Indian National congress had also accepted the plan, but there was so much bad blood between Jinnah and the congress leadership, that Nehru sabotaged the plan (India wins Freedom Maulana Azad). They were also apprehensive that Jinnah’s Muslim League would allow the feudal system to thrive in the region governed by them, thus making land reforms a near impossibility.
Jinnah, though he had allowed his lieutenants to invoke the name of religion in the campaign for creation of the country, wanted to separate religion from the government, and declared so in his presiding address to the first session of the constituent assembly of the country on august 11, 1947, three days before actual independence, (the Muslim clergy almost to a man had opposed creation of Pakistan).
One could find excuses for the country not being able to pay much attention to education, health, welfare and job creation.
But Jinnah died in September 1948, just over a year after the birth of the country, and the helm passed to his heir apparent Liaquat Ali Khan a British trained barrister and an Oxford educated scion of a feudal house. Apparently the schooling in England had not rubbed much on him, neither had the secular views of his supreme leader.
Another complication, existential as it would turn out not in too distant a future, was that the Eastern wing’s population was 45 million to the Western wing’s 35. Any constitution based on universal adult franchise would give a commanding majority to the non-feudal middle class led Eastern wing. This the leadership of the Western wing were not prepared to countenance at any cost. They were frightened out of their wits that a truly representative government would introduce comprehensive land reforms, cut back on military expenditure, reform civil services so the British trained bureaucrats would serve the public and not lord it over in the interest of the colonial rulers.
Short on experience politicians, the country was in the form grip of bureaucrats. They, champions of the status quo, were natural allies of the feudal system.
Religion had traditionally supported the establishment, so the clergy, only wielding marginal influence yet, were nevertheless on the side of keeping the anachronistic feudal system.
Liaquat, even if he had wanted to, could not have a democratic constitution passed by the constituent assembly. He was content with getting an Objectives Resolution (Qarar Dad e Maqasid) passed which, though paying lip service to the rights and privileges of the minority, nevertheless put paid to the dream of Jinnah for a secular government of Pakistan, by declaring that Islam would be the state religion, and only a Muslim adult male could be the head of the state. Liaquat was assassinated while addressing a public meeting by a reportedly demented soldier who was disgusted by his lukewarm support of the ‘jihad’ for Kashmir, or so the official security apparatus would have one believe.
Now the bureaucrats came into their own. Their god father, one Ghulam Muhammad was chosen as the governor general (not having adopted a constitution, Pakistan was still governed by the 1935 India act for self governance, and the Crown of England appointed the governor general, on the recommendation of the Prime minister of the Dominion. India, in contrast had passed a constitution, declared itself a republic and elected a president all by 1950.
The bureaucrats wanted to destabilize the government, and launched a bloody murder and mayhem campaign against a minority ‘heretical’ sect of Islam, called Qadianis after the birth place of their *‘prophet’. Several thousands were killed, and Martial law had to be imposed in parts of Punjab, thus giving the army an early taste of governing civilians.
Ghulam Muhammad lost little time in sacking the prime minister, and followed up the act with dissolution of the assembly in 1954. the supreme court upheld the decision, (thus laying the ground work of all the later take over by Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf).
Liaquat, though fully aware of the utterly futile expectation that the military would ever be able to wrest control of Kashmir from India, nevertheless kept on pampering the armed services. In the early days of his tenure, he had turned down the invitation of the Soviet Union to visit the country, this notwithstanding the fact that Stalin had ordered the communist party of India, much against its instincts and ignoring the religious tinge of the movement, to support the creation of Pakistan, on the basis of his much discredited theory of autonomy for minorities. In stead he went to visit ‘Christian’ USA.
The bureaucrats brought in the army chief Ayub Khan into a cabinet post, while he kept his army one, thus setting a precedent that he and future usurpers followed.
The bureaucratic-feudal-army regime now started the collaboration with the imperialistic block and joined *‘mutual defense’ pacts with the USA, Britain and pre de Gaulle France, aimed at deterring the expansion of the influence of the Soviet Union.
Arab monarchies led by Saudi Arabia had been nurturing the radical Islamist Wahabist Muslim Brotherhood, in whose birth Imperial Britain had played a great part. They used it against the rising tide of Arab nationalism, and also helped its tentacles over the rest of the Muslim world through a network of ‘charities’ and Saudi funded seminaries and ideologically bonded parties such as the Jamaat e Islami of Pakistan led by an ideological heir of the early Brotherhood leadership, Maulana Maududi.
Through these years, expenditure on ‘defense’ kept on increasing, with little left for social services.
East Pakistani politicians had been coerced to accept parity with the Western wing on the issue of the number of seats in the constituent assembly, and enshrined in the 1956 constitution. As a sop the four provinces of West Pakistan had been merged into ‘One Unit’, which served to consolidate the power further into the hands of the bureaucrats and the landowners, as for every little decision, people had to travel to Lahore, not an insignificant expense for the poor.
The stage was now set for general elections which were announced for January 1959. Suhrawardy, the most credible leader after Jinnah, had attracted a large following in his native Bengal, and was making headway in the army-feudal heartland of the Punjab. Other progressive elements of the society had tapped the latent national sentiments in the smaller provinces-Sind, NWFP and Baluchistan. An election could conceivably offer sufficient number of seats to Suharwardy for him to adopt egalitarian policies.
The establishment could not countenance that. In October 1958, Iskander Mirza, an old time colonial bureaucrat, who had inherited the job of governor general from that archetypal mandarin Ghulam Muhammad, and had been elected President under the 1956 constitution , declared martial law, dissolved the national assembly, sacked the government and appointed Ayub Khan the chief martial law administrator, while retaining the office of the president.
After three weeks Ayub dispatched him into an ignominious exile.
Ayub was very popular. He could do no wrong. He appointed a close associate as governor of East Pakistan. The man Lt General Azam Khan was a born populist. He opened the governors house to the public to visit and have tea and biscuits any time and publicly upbraided bureaucrats for not taking their three piece suits off and physically help during a flood. The public took to him like they would a savior.
Ayub promptly replaced him.
Smugglers, politicians, journalists, hoarders and people he had personal grudge against were arrested (Ayub Khurro, as defense minister had kept him waiting for 45 minutes. He had to suffer solitary confinement, in the desert heat of Sind, with out even an electric fan). He also took the opportunity of dismissing 301 senior bureaucrats, all but one of whom were * (the term ‘son of the soil’ was coined meaning persons whose fathers were born in what became Pakistan. In practice the group included immigrants from the Indian Punjab as well, and excluded Sindhis, Baluchis, while Pathans were kept at the fringe) immigrants from India. He set the precedent of extra-legal acts, which all the subsequent military and civil dictators followed.
Ayub was no revolutionary. He announced, with great fanfare, land reforms and only redistributed the land among the close kin of landowners. He declared that the country was going to be industrialized in no time, but only arranged to concentrate wealth in fewer hands
He pledged to excise corruption from body politic, but looked the other way when criminals and administrators got out of jail after offering hefty bribes to army officers.
He raved and ranted against nepotism, but his son Gohar, hitherto a captain in the army, and his father in law a Lt general became the owner of a huge industrial complex, overnight.
He proclaimed institution of pure democracy as his life’s mission, but only offered indirect elections through an electoral college, whose members were elected by a few by a few hundred voters who could be coerced and manipulated, and were, to vote for government approved candidates.
What was perhaps worse was that he got the country deeper into Western alliances.
There was little development of infra-structure, or advancement of social services. People remained unemployed and could only visit Hakims and worse quacks for illness. Government hospitals continued to cater to high officials and the affluent.
JFK had stopped him from walking into Indian held Kashmir, while India was down and out after its humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese. He had got him a pledge from Nehru to arrange a plebiscite in the state.
But JFK was assassinated and Nehru died. Ayub was widely and openly derided for losing a golden opportunity for a victorious Jihad.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Umeed
“UMMEED”
A progressive Magazine sponsored by
DIP (Develop in Peace)
Special Report
July 3, 2004
Watching the proceedings of the, APSA (Action Group of physicians of south Asia) sponsored Seminar on “Prospects of Democracy in Pakistan” held in Washington DC on was quite an experience. It was held at the same venue, though not under the auspices of Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America and the attendance was largely though not exclusively by APPNA members. In fact, it over shadowed some APPNA sponsored sessions taking place at the same time.
Interest in Pakistan/Democracy session is quite natural. The country owes its origin largely to the vision of a single person, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Vast majority of Muslims of India owed allegiance to him and gave him unstinting support directly, consistently and over several decades. They supported him in spite of the opposition of some nationalist Muslim leaders of great stature and undoubted integrity and in spite of the opposition of large numbers of leading Muslim “Maulanas”.
Jinnah was secular to the core and in his first, now internationally acclaimed (though many attempts have been made in Pakistan to suppress it, mercifully all unsuccessful) speech to the constituent assembly of Pakistan that religion was a personal affair and had nothing to do with business of the state.
Fates of societies are generally not determined by individuals. But they are no doubt affected by historic, figures too numerous to name.
Jinnah was one of them but he passed away just over a year after establishment of Pakistan before he could have a constitution passed. He was in any case terminally sick for over half the period of his life as the leader of Pakistan.
The process of Democracy was subverted soon after his death. The very maulanas who had opposed Pakistan, had called it Kafiristan and Jinnah a Kafir (Land of Heretics &Heretic) infiltrated into the body politic and together with Landlords got the constituent Assembly to pass the “Basic Principles Resolution” declaring Pakistan virtually a religious state
. Democracy means rule of the people and laws developed by people’s representatives. Religious laws are based on Divine messages without the intellectual input of humans so a “Religious Democracy” is a contradiction in terms, not with standing revisionist endeavors of many to clothe religion in a democratic garb.
Religion is also the most potent force for status quo. There is implicit alliance between religion and feudal establishment each nourishing the other.
Democracy on the other hand gives some sustenance to people, as they constitute the vast majority of any society and though levers of power are in the hands of capitalists’ it, to varying extent, has to be shared with people. All western democracies are living examples.
Western (and dominant) wing of Pakistan. at its inception was and remains overwhelming feudal. The interest of the ruling class-feudals, Army, Beaurocrats and their hangers on the Mullahs – resides in the supremacy of “Divine Laws” which work to preserve their privileges, lands, wealth and power using the state machinery to control shackle and suppress popular opinion, dwelling on sanctity of private property (never mind the origin of the property which in most cases was the largesse of the British to their supporters for betraying their fellow citizens and co religionist) and attempting to console people that they will have rewards for their current destitution in paradise.
East Pakistan, colonized, largely non-feudal fought its way out of the country a bare twenty four years after independence, the national catastrophe precipitated by the blatant suppression of all kinds of freedom by a military regime.
It is with this background in mind that we have to consider the prospects of Democracy in Pakistan. The great interest in the seminar is easily explicable as well. Physicians come from all social strata, deal with all kinds of people, poor rich, illiterate and intellectual, liberal and fundamentalists, young and old. They deal with ill health and misery, which though may harden a few hearts, generally engenders compassion and thought fullness for physicians it is very difficult to remain narrow minded and bigoted, though I have to concede that some do manage it. They enjoy a high standard of living and in the USA a large measure of independence of Power Brokers. Pakistani physicians have a glowing heritage of Political consciousness and before Ayub Khans martial Law medical students were actually in the front ranks of progressive movement. And have remained politically active since. Though mellowed with age and enervated by prosperity the spark exists and they are a force to reckon within electoral politics.
The session was ably conducted by Dr. Zafar Iqbal. It started with ten-minute presentation each by Mr. Aqil Shah a political analyst about to embark on a PhD program at Columbia University, Senator Tariq Azim Khan (for Pakistani Government) Mr. Ehsan Iqbal (for Nawaz Muslim League) and Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan (for peoples party). Mr. Aqil Shah contended that democracy did not survive and thrive in Pakistan due to repeated military interventions. The two party system after demise of Zia ul Haq had side lined Mullahs and in popular parlance MMA (Muttahda Majlis Amal) is called Military Mullah Alliance. Freedom of expression is proclaimed but freedom after expression is far from guaranteed. Military take over ostensibly to eradicate corruption but political maturity, national consciousness and not military rule is the answer. Institutions have to be developed. Pakistan is multi ethnic, military denies provincial autonomy and genuine federal parliamentary system. In his opinion military was the problem and not the solution. Military has a hammer but every problem is not a nail.
Senator Tariq Azeem khan valiantly defended Military take over. In his opinion people in Pakistan were not fit for democracy, they did not understand it, were not capable of informed choice, voted for symbols like a horse or a sword largely at the behest of the local Thanedar who was under the orders of the local Zamindar. He equated elections with a political zoo. According to him Army had always participated in political decision-making in Pakistan, many politicians had asked General Musharaf. to take over. They had explicitly accepted his rule by taking part in elections and started protesting only after Mr. Jamali was nominated Prime minister because prior to the nomination they had been hopeful that some one from their group would be so named.
Mr. Ehsan Iqbal opined that the age of industrial revolution was over and had been replaced by knowledge revolution. There cannot be any sustainable development without people’s participation. South Africa was no less corrupt and no more efficient than Pakistan yet democracy prevailed there. He thought that people in Pakistan had become apathetic, suffered from national depression and thus had withdrawn into their shells and lost self-respect.
Military persistently claim that they take over when everything broke down. People have internalized the propaganda and believed in it. Pakistani politicians were no more corrupt than the average politicians anywhere. He asked why equally illiterate Indians could sustain democracy and Pakistanis couldn’t. Democracy cannot be denied to people because of illiteracy.
He cited Sri Lanka and Bangla Desh where there was more social Turmoil, Civil war etc they still practiced democracy.
Military regimes benefited from geo strategic factors Ayub received US largesse due to Vietnam War, Zia due to Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and Musharraf was the beneficiary of 9/11. Any prosperity and development during these regimes was due to aid rather than any factor inherent in so called military organization/ law order etc. Military on the contrary encourage lawlessness. A truck driver according to him broke traffic light on the rationale that Musharraf violated the constitution, the supreme law of the land.
Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan argued that Ayub Khan’s regime had caused a great paradigm change from the concept of a welfare state to a security state, thus blundering into 1965 war during which Pakistan was battered and eventually leading to 1971 humiliation.
Military developed the philosophical basis for national security- he attributed it to general Sher Ali, who theorized that India was bent upon breaking up Pakistan, and that Afghanistan was promoting Pakhktunistan. Army became defender of faith not just defenders of boundaries.
Military/Mullah alliance was formalized during Yahya’s regime and consummated during Zia’s time. Musharraf, though secular and liberal can’t break the tie.
Zia introduced Hudood ordinance, was initially shaky but on Dec 27/1979 Russia invaded Afghanistan USA started funding and arming the region patronizing people like Hikmat yar and Osama Bin Laden. Military and Mullah lead a symbiotic existence. People have to stand up for civil society threatened by Mullah/Army and have to break the Mullah Military bond.
An animated question answer session followed.
Some one asked why MMA was not represented. Response was constraints of time availability. And they would be invited the next time.
Mr. Ehsan Iqbal was asked why military over threw Nawaz even though he was their product. His response- Both Bhutto and Nawaz started their careers under the army, one was executed and the other exiled. He responded to a further question by stating that democracy can’t survive if your keep on uprooting it. Military was not trained or capable of running a country. Nawaz was not prosecuted because the case was UN sustainable US collaboration has subverted the process of restoration of democracy. In recent election popular vote was against the army. Social stability led to economic gain.
Mr. Aziz Ahsan stated that democracy was a learning process, we should trust the people and not the General, it was as stream, if you stop it, it would stagnate, there have been three bloodless coups because Army enjoyed security paradigm, he enumerated several commercial projects run by the military, thus it was a corporation and not a fighting force any more.. Army works under overall US plan.
Senator Tariq Azeem opined that military took over because politicians failed the people PPP was interested in democracy only to regain power. Opposition politicians approached Musharraf to take over. Opposition leaders never want government to finish its term. Question was if we should have western or china style democracy. China style produced more progress.
The session was highly instructive and highlighted many problems affecting Pakistan. Though the fundamental question as to why Indian army, as much a product of British government as its Pakistani counterpart did not manage even a single coup was not even brought up by the speakers, panellists or the audience.
. The session, however, did represent a break through in deliberations of Pakistan physicians and merits collaboration of its sponsor APSA, on the one hand and APPNA on the other.
The program found ready and enthusiastic acceptance among the rank and file of APPNA membership. And APPNA stalwarts as the redoubtable team of Raana and Waheed Akbar and many other luminaries graced the audience, as did Amy Goodman who may justifiably be described as the leading light of liberal American tradition as well as correspondents from Pakistani. Newspapers – Nation (Iftikhar Ali Choudhury), Dawn (Masood Haider) and Jung (Nayyar Zaidi).
Such endeavors should not be perceived as a threat by APPNA establishment. These sessions would not take anything away from APPNA, rather they would embellish its image as a progressive broad based organization attentive to the aspirations of its constituency and resonating with slogans of national rejuvenation. Any attempt to preempt holding a seminar during Appna meetings would back fire as the session could and most likely would be held at the same time and at another venue in the same town and Appna would lose substantial audience.
S.Ehtisham.M.D.
Editor, Ummeed.
This report is being presented as a maiden effort of the “Ummeed” team. Regular issues on themes of vital interest will follow at 3-4 month interval.
We present, with pride in their accomplishments, integrity, and enthusiasm, short “Bios” of our sponsors and members of our editorial board.
Amit Shah is an Internist, practicing in S.C.Born in Ahmedabad India his actions are driven by real issues on the ground and he is willing to work with anybody who believes in participatory democracy and sustainable effort. He is in the governing body of American Association of Physicians of India
Sachit Balsari, MBBS, research fellow in Howard School of Public Health, Program on Human Rights & Health. Strongly involved with Indo-US interface on secularism, minority protection both in terms of readings & networks, including trust of several Indian Muslim leaders.
Vaijayanti Gupta, Based in metro DC area. Coord of women/gender issues cell within AID; also for India’s development; involved with evaluating/promoting several grassroots projects.
Sanat Mohanty, PhD, Based in MN, is a core member of several progressive initiatives: editor, writer of South Asian newsletter; theater; study circles; grassroots project fund/awareness raising in India; author of a book on sustainable development, empowerment.
Tulika Narayan, PhD: Economist, worked closely with SEWA-Ela Bhatt fame, works on women/Gender issues; involved in evaluating several grassroots projects.
Sherebanu, Houston. From Mumbai, with relatives in Karachi, core team of last year’s joint celebrations. Whether Bhopal campaign, grassroots develop, projects in indo-pak peace or communal harmony.
Amna Buttar HR activist, founder of Asian American Network Against Abuse
A progressive Magazine sponsored by
DIP (Develop in Peace)
Special Report
July 3, 2004
Watching the proceedings of the, APSA (Action Group of physicians of south Asia) sponsored Seminar on “Prospects of Democracy in Pakistan” held in Washington DC on was quite an experience. It was held at the same venue, though not under the auspices of Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America and the attendance was largely though not exclusively by APPNA members. In fact, it over shadowed some APPNA sponsored sessions taking place at the same time.
Interest in Pakistan/Democracy session is quite natural. The country owes its origin largely to the vision of a single person, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Vast majority of Muslims of India owed allegiance to him and gave him unstinting support directly, consistently and over several decades. They supported him in spite of the opposition of some nationalist Muslim leaders of great stature and undoubted integrity and in spite of the opposition of large numbers of leading Muslim “Maulanas”.
Jinnah was secular to the core and in his first, now internationally acclaimed (though many attempts have been made in Pakistan to suppress it, mercifully all unsuccessful) speech to the constituent assembly of Pakistan that religion was a personal affair and had nothing to do with business of the state.
Fates of societies are generally not determined by individuals. But they are no doubt affected by historic, figures too numerous to name.
Jinnah was one of them but he passed away just over a year after establishment of Pakistan before he could have a constitution passed. He was in any case terminally sick for over half the period of his life as the leader of Pakistan.
The process of Democracy was subverted soon after his death. The very maulanas who had opposed Pakistan, had called it Kafiristan and Jinnah a Kafir (Land of Heretics &Heretic) infiltrated into the body politic and together with Landlords got the constituent Assembly to pass the “Basic Principles Resolution” declaring Pakistan virtually a religious state
. Democracy means rule of the people and laws developed by people’s representatives. Religious laws are based on Divine messages without the intellectual input of humans so a “Religious Democracy” is a contradiction in terms, not with standing revisionist endeavors of many to clothe religion in a democratic garb.
Religion is also the most potent force for status quo. There is implicit alliance between religion and feudal establishment each nourishing the other.
Democracy on the other hand gives some sustenance to people, as they constitute the vast majority of any society and though levers of power are in the hands of capitalists’ it, to varying extent, has to be shared with people. All western democracies are living examples.
Western (and dominant) wing of Pakistan. at its inception was and remains overwhelming feudal. The interest of the ruling class-feudals, Army, Beaurocrats and their hangers on the Mullahs – resides in the supremacy of “Divine Laws” which work to preserve their privileges, lands, wealth and power using the state machinery to control shackle and suppress popular opinion, dwelling on sanctity of private property (never mind the origin of the property which in most cases was the largesse of the British to their supporters for betraying their fellow citizens and co religionist) and attempting to console people that they will have rewards for their current destitution in paradise.
East Pakistan, colonized, largely non-feudal fought its way out of the country a bare twenty four years after independence, the national catastrophe precipitated by the blatant suppression of all kinds of freedom by a military regime.
It is with this background in mind that we have to consider the prospects of Democracy in Pakistan. The great interest in the seminar is easily explicable as well. Physicians come from all social strata, deal with all kinds of people, poor rich, illiterate and intellectual, liberal and fundamentalists, young and old. They deal with ill health and misery, which though may harden a few hearts, generally engenders compassion and thought fullness for physicians it is very difficult to remain narrow minded and bigoted, though I have to concede that some do manage it. They enjoy a high standard of living and in the USA a large measure of independence of Power Brokers. Pakistani physicians have a glowing heritage of Political consciousness and before Ayub Khans martial Law medical students were actually in the front ranks of progressive movement. And have remained politically active since. Though mellowed with age and enervated by prosperity the spark exists and they are a force to reckon within electoral politics.
The session was ably conducted by Dr. Zafar Iqbal. It started with ten-minute presentation each by Mr. Aqil Shah a political analyst about to embark on a PhD program at Columbia University, Senator Tariq Azim Khan (for Pakistani Government) Mr. Ehsan Iqbal (for Nawaz Muslim League) and Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan (for peoples party). Mr. Aqil Shah contended that democracy did not survive and thrive in Pakistan due to repeated military interventions. The two party system after demise of Zia ul Haq had side lined Mullahs and in popular parlance MMA (Muttahda Majlis Amal) is called Military Mullah Alliance. Freedom of expression is proclaimed but freedom after expression is far from guaranteed. Military take over ostensibly to eradicate corruption but political maturity, national consciousness and not military rule is the answer. Institutions have to be developed. Pakistan is multi ethnic, military denies provincial autonomy and genuine federal parliamentary system. In his opinion military was the problem and not the solution. Military has a hammer but every problem is not a nail.
Senator Tariq Azeem khan valiantly defended Military take over. In his opinion people in Pakistan were not fit for democracy, they did not understand it, were not capable of informed choice, voted for symbols like a horse or a sword largely at the behest of the local Thanedar who was under the orders of the local Zamindar. He equated elections with a political zoo. According to him Army had always participated in political decision-making in Pakistan, many politicians had asked General Musharaf. to take over. They had explicitly accepted his rule by taking part in elections and started protesting only after Mr. Jamali was nominated Prime minister because prior to the nomination they had been hopeful that some one from their group would be so named.
Mr. Ehsan Iqbal opined that the age of industrial revolution was over and had been replaced by knowledge revolution. There cannot be any sustainable development without people’s participation. South Africa was no less corrupt and no more efficient than Pakistan yet democracy prevailed there. He thought that people in Pakistan had become apathetic, suffered from national depression and thus had withdrawn into their shells and lost self-respect.
Military persistently claim that they take over when everything broke down. People have internalized the propaganda and believed in it. Pakistani politicians were no more corrupt than the average politicians anywhere. He asked why equally illiterate Indians could sustain democracy and Pakistanis couldn’t. Democracy cannot be denied to people because of illiteracy.
He cited Sri Lanka and Bangla Desh where there was more social Turmoil, Civil war etc they still practiced democracy.
Military regimes benefited from geo strategic factors Ayub received US largesse due to Vietnam War, Zia due to Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and Musharraf was the beneficiary of 9/11. Any prosperity and development during these regimes was due to aid rather than any factor inherent in so called military organization/ law order etc. Military on the contrary encourage lawlessness. A truck driver according to him broke traffic light on the rationale that Musharraf violated the constitution, the supreme law of the land.
Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan argued that Ayub Khan’s regime had caused a great paradigm change from the concept of a welfare state to a security state, thus blundering into 1965 war during which Pakistan was battered and eventually leading to 1971 humiliation.
Military developed the philosophical basis for national security- he attributed it to general Sher Ali, who theorized that India was bent upon breaking up Pakistan, and that Afghanistan was promoting Pakhktunistan. Army became defender of faith not just defenders of boundaries.
Military/Mullah alliance was formalized during Yahya’s regime and consummated during Zia’s time. Musharraf, though secular and liberal can’t break the tie.
Zia introduced Hudood ordinance, was initially shaky but on Dec 27/1979 Russia invaded Afghanistan USA started funding and arming the region patronizing people like Hikmat yar and Osama Bin Laden. Military and Mullah lead a symbiotic existence. People have to stand up for civil society threatened by Mullah/Army and have to break the Mullah Military bond.
An animated question answer session followed.
Some one asked why MMA was not represented. Response was constraints of time availability. And they would be invited the next time.
Mr. Ehsan Iqbal was asked why military over threw Nawaz even though he was their product. His response- Both Bhutto and Nawaz started their careers under the army, one was executed and the other exiled. He responded to a further question by stating that democracy can’t survive if your keep on uprooting it. Military was not trained or capable of running a country. Nawaz was not prosecuted because the case was UN sustainable US collaboration has subverted the process of restoration of democracy. In recent election popular vote was against the army. Social stability led to economic gain.
Mr. Aziz Ahsan stated that democracy was a learning process, we should trust the people and not the General, it was as stream, if you stop it, it would stagnate, there have been three bloodless coups because Army enjoyed security paradigm, he enumerated several commercial projects run by the military, thus it was a corporation and not a fighting force any more.. Army works under overall US plan.
Senator Tariq Azeem opined that military took over because politicians failed the people PPP was interested in democracy only to regain power. Opposition politicians approached Musharraf to take over. Opposition leaders never want government to finish its term. Question was if we should have western or china style democracy. China style produced more progress.
The session was highly instructive and highlighted many problems affecting Pakistan. Though the fundamental question as to why Indian army, as much a product of British government as its Pakistani counterpart did not manage even a single coup was not even brought up by the speakers, panellists or the audience.
. The session, however, did represent a break through in deliberations of Pakistan physicians and merits collaboration of its sponsor APSA, on the one hand and APPNA on the other.
The program found ready and enthusiastic acceptance among the rank and file of APPNA membership. And APPNA stalwarts as the redoubtable team of Raana and Waheed Akbar and many other luminaries graced the audience, as did Amy Goodman who may justifiably be described as the leading light of liberal American tradition as well as correspondents from Pakistani. Newspapers – Nation (Iftikhar Ali Choudhury), Dawn (Masood Haider) and Jung (Nayyar Zaidi).
Such endeavors should not be perceived as a threat by APPNA establishment. These sessions would not take anything away from APPNA, rather they would embellish its image as a progressive broad based organization attentive to the aspirations of its constituency and resonating with slogans of national rejuvenation. Any attempt to preempt holding a seminar during Appna meetings would back fire as the session could and most likely would be held at the same time and at another venue in the same town and Appna would lose substantial audience.
S.Ehtisham.M.D.
Editor, Ummeed.
This report is being presented as a maiden effort of the “Ummeed” team. Regular issues on themes of vital interest will follow at 3-4 month interval.
We present, with pride in their accomplishments, integrity, and enthusiasm, short “Bios” of our sponsors and members of our editorial board.
Amit Shah is an Internist, practicing in S.C.Born in Ahmedabad India his actions are driven by real issues on the ground and he is willing to work with anybody who believes in participatory democracy and sustainable effort. He is in the governing body of American Association of Physicians of India
Sachit Balsari, MBBS, research fellow in Howard School of Public Health, Program on Human Rights & Health. Strongly involved with Indo-US interface on secularism, minority protection both in terms of readings & networks, including trust of several Indian Muslim leaders.
Vaijayanti Gupta, Based in metro DC area. Coord of women/gender issues cell within AID; also for India’s development; involved with evaluating/promoting several grassroots projects.
Sanat Mohanty, PhD, Based in MN, is a core member of several progressive initiatives: editor, writer of South Asian newsletter; theater; study circles; grassroots project fund/awareness raising in India; author of a book on sustainable development, empowerment.
Tulika Narayan, PhD: Economist, worked closely with SEWA-Ela Bhatt fame, works on women/Gender issues; involved in evaluating several grassroots projects.
Sherebanu, Houston. From Mumbai, with relatives in Karachi, core team of last year’s joint celebrations. Whether Bhopal campaign, grassroots develop, projects in indo-pak peace or communal harmony.
Amna Buttar HR activist, founder of Asian American Network Against Abuse
Fundamentalism American Style
ON FUNDAMENTALISM AMERICAN
STYLE
The term was coined by the religious right in the nine-twenties in the USA to define themselves. To understand the background of fundamentalism, a brief survey of Socio-Religious evolution would be essential.
Religion is a highly resilient institution. One may speak of it as a spent force at ones own peril. It has been written off many times only to come back up with renewed vigor.
One may justifiably say that religion is as old as human kind. Humans evolved into the current form for as Homo sapiens about 1.7 million years ago. The first of the species must have reacted to natural phenomenon instinctively running away from fires, seeking shelter from flood and hurricanes. They may have developed the faculty of analysis but did not yet have any vehicle to develop a body of knowledge. They did not have a spoken language.
Once spoken language evolved, organized thought was possible. Analysis observation, conclusion, interpretation and philosophy would be no use unless one could share the thoughts with others or learn and teach.
Written language was to come much later. Organized thought pre-dated it by unknown millennia.
At some point a group of people must have tried to make sense of hot and cold weather, high and low tide, rain and drought, storms and floods etc. Some were beneficial, others harmful.. It may have dawned on some bright person that there was a purpose, a design or an agency behind it.
The primal instinct was self-preservation. Good was what promoted it, evil led to its retardation? A natural disaster may have coincidentally followed an evil deed for example theft. It might have led to the belief that a super human agency had sent the calamity as collective punishment. Some incidental act may have been followed by abatement of a forest fire.
Lo and behold, something had propitiated the mover of fires.
Other animals were physically stronger. A tiger could easily kill a person but several persons, better still, armed with sticks and stones could chase it away. Most animals could run faster. In order to kill them for food, preventing their escape by posting persons at exit routes would be effective. Stealth would be effective too. Take an animal unawares; they did not have the human faculty of planning and forethought. If you tempted the animal with food, trained and beat them into submission, you could use them for transport and heavy work like tilling. Females of some species would provide milk, a nourishing and safe diet.
So we now have, analytical thought, organization and collective action, albiet at a very primitive level. We have a hunter-gatherer society. There is no stable abode. Groups travel, after resources of one area have been exhausted. Diet is meat, berries, and fruits. Fire as protection against elements and predators is known, cooking is probably not. Meat is eaten raw (much like today’s rare beef steak in the USA). A fire probably burnt down a forest roasting animals. Finding no other meat, people may have been forced to eat “cooked” meat. They probably didn’t like it, but may have discovered, that it kept longer with out going bad.
We don’t have a concept of property in terms of owning dwelling or land yet. There is no specialization except perhaps; that men went out to hunt and women managed the family. Polyandry was practiced; men were away for days or even weeks, leaving a few for guard duty. It was the matriachal stage of development. The same women had to look after returning providers.
Population increased. Hunting grounds became insufficient, climatic change may have intervened. It became increasingly difficult to draw sustenance from known areas. Mass starvation must have been a recurring event. Thievery and later robbery must have been invented. The disruptive causes must have had deleterious effect; preventive measures must have been taken.
Primitive law and order came into being.
Naturally occurring grain bushes must have been noticed, how seeds when water was available water and exposed to sunshine grew into plants, as did fruit and berries. Some group of people may have decided to stay put in a place with plenty of grain. They were eaten raw till an accidental fire produced cooked rice, as meat had been “cooked” previously. Cooked rice went down the throat more easily. Lentils and vegetables were soon tenderized by cooking.
Once settled on land, elements couldn’t be escaped from, as easily. One had to build shelter. Someone noticed the beneficial effect of certain plants/leaves/root and he/she became a part time medicine person. Some could build better. Some one may have cried aloud that an impending storm would go away. It may have passed them by, and we have a spirit man.
But all work was communal, though specialization was developing.
With increasing complexity of society tribes arose, which congregated with other tribes for exchange of goods and mutual protection, thus organized life is taking shape now. Tribal heads must have been chosen by election or consensus and over time must have assumed hereditary rights. Town/city government must have been formed with hierarchical structure.
We have a definite concept of property necessitating legitimate children who would inherit and law and order agencies, which would protect it. Rulers who could lead wars of plunder or defense became a necessity.
It is final goodbye to equality of man and woman and to matriarchal society.
We have seen that the concept of super natural was necessitated to ward off natural calamities, flood, lightening and pestilence, but it was hitherto mostly an individual, a spirit man to propitiate the “movers of disasters” which may have been named gods, but they were attributed properties akin to human ones. They had body, sex, families, hierarchy, moods, and sentiments; only they were far more potent and rather short tempered. One had to watch ones step with them. A pantheon of gods for lightening, fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, evolved.
But it was not organized religion.
The need for organized religion came with the concept of property. In order to establish legitimacy of birth, some kind of formality sanctioned by the spirit man must be gone through. Retribution for infidelity must have been threatened to keep hitherto free spirits in line. You could post guards, but they would be more effective if thieves were made to fear perdition. The rulers had their soldiers but to keep the undesirables and rebels under control Assistance of the spirit man was needed to provide legitimacy to the ruler. The spirit man had to be fed, clothed, housed and a place for his incantations provided. He returned the compliment. Divine right of king is in its incipient stage.
Not very secure in their jobs, spirit men must have organized, much like in later artisan guilds. Organized religion is raising its head.
With time, better grasp of natural phenomenon, body of accumulated human experience called knowledge is preserved. Population explodes and society develops into kingdoms, later into empires.
With enhanced knowledge of natural phenomenon, empirical religion gives way to inspirational, which is better able to protect the status quo.
Pharaohs preceded Judaic prophets but did not have “divine” religions. Chinese and Indians had earth-based religions too.
Now temporal and spiritual offices are combined in a prophet who wages wars to subdue non-believers, unless they capitulate without aggression (much as Libya did after assault on Iraq). Property was acquired, as a reward for converting the heathen (oil in recompense for ‘liberating’ Iraq).
Christianity was a revolt against the inequities, the injustices and avarice of the priestly order. The priests conspired with their foreign over lords to quash the teachings of one of its own, as he was bucking the trend. Status quo and privelege had to be ensured even at the cast of crucifying a member of the brotherhood of priests. The new religion went under ground. Bible was compiled some sixty years after crucifixation.
Church eventually becomes predominant after a Roman emperor converts to the religion. From a band of fugitives it metamorphoses to a pillar of establishment, stifling knowledge, assigning stations in life, forcibly keeping vassals, lords and kings in their respective places.
Dark age prevailed. There was dire poverty, ignorance, frequent pestilence and slavery, one law for the ruler, another for the ruled, palaces for nobles and bishops and hovels for their followers, wasteful abundance for the rich and maybe one meal a day for the poor. Religion protected privelege.
I am talking of medieval Europe. Please keep in mind; this inspirational religion had rebelled against established order, preaching quality and justice.
While Europe was shackled by a subverted religious order, another religion arose in the unlikeliest of places- Mecca. This religion also rebelled against established order, preaching equality, justice and peace but its egalitarian aspect was overcome rather quickly (fifty three years) by establishment and it was used as an tool for empire building much as Judaism and Christianity had done before it.
The prophet of Islam had much greater early success than Judaic prophets or Jesus, perhaps because he attained prophethood at the age of forty, escaped assassination, perhaps because communications and travel were much faster and he came from an important though impoverished tribe. Arabs though illiterate were independent and Mecca was the crossroad of trade routes.
Between Hijra AD622 (migration) to Medina when effective state building started and AD632- just ten years- he had the whole Arabian Peninsula under his control.
Jesus Christ, on the other hand lived in a country ruled by foreigners and unlike Muhammad had to challenge the entrenched priestly order, whose worldly privileges were at stake and which did not hesitate in getting their Roman overlords to prosecute him. He was crucified when he was thirty-three.
.
State and religion went hand in hand in Europe and in Asia too after the advent of Islam.
Many pagan rites had crept in Christianity, time was ripe for a reformist movement, Puritanism and Protestantism supplanted Catholicism in large parts of Europe. Among the most interesting reasons for discarding Catholicism, was king Henry XIII’s desire to keep on marrying and popes refusal to keep on sanctioning them. Church had come to rival state; banishing Catholicism brought huge church properties under the king’s control in England. Separation of church and state was implicit in reformation, though religion continued to be used by European government to aid and abet colonization.
The decline and fall of Muslim empires led Muslims to attribute their sorry state to non-performance of religious rites. They were no longer good Muslims, so God did not favor them anymore.
A small minority, however, attributed the sorry state to lack of education, innovation, initiative, and drive. As a corollary they put Europeans on a pedestal, idealizing them, aping their mores, customs and traditions. They had to learn European languages of necessity. But this put them at a great disadvantage in education, spending years learning a foreign language before getting a grip on other subjects such as science, mathematics etc.
The small minority of Muslims who believed that their redemption lay in adopting European ways, naturally, adopted liberal thought as well, and were the ones who led the war of liberation in India and Africa (In Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq it was the struggle against national decay and subservience to the west). Clerics did not take active part in the struggle, in fact many opposed it on the grounds that God will take of everything, if one followed his commandments and other equally spurious reasons abhorrent to the word and spirit of religion.
When leaders failed to deliver and spurred by further humiliations, establishment of Israel, defeats of 1967, 1973 at the hands of Israel, 1971 civil war in East Pakistan, Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Muslims aided and abetted by the West in general and USA in particular, financed by Saudis (to save their own skin from indigenous fanatics) embraced fanaticism and resorted to terrorism.
Europeans have, by and large, remained free of fundamentalism, keeping state and religion separate and vigorously reinforcing the policy, as the recent French law-banning exhibition of religious symbols in state institutions.
Americans bucked the European trend. U.S. constitution does ordain separation of church and state, but attempts at subversion and neo-conservative interpretation of the constitution have been going on for a long time.
In order to understand why (Americans North and South) and Europe took divergent paths in the matter of religion in daily life and Government, one has to look at the inception of the country. Europeans migrated to Americas for a number of reasons, predominant being economic and religious persecution. A small percentage took to the boats with dreams of fortune, but vast majority were escaping starvation. Destitute masses have to seek solace in and hope for divine intervention. They become very religious. Victims of religious persecution give up hearth, home and even life for their beliefs. They would not be inclined to liberal thought.
The immigrants came upon a vast land, sparsely populated by unsophisticated people, who had been isolated from the rest of the world for a long time and who had been left behind, in the rest of the world’s march to scientific, industrial development. What was even more important, they had acquired powerful tools of war. They were overpowered easily, by a combination of trickery, germ warfare (they were rewarded for their hospitality to the starving immigrants, by a gift of blankets impregnated with small pox. Not having been exposed to the disease before and totally lacking immunity, untold numbers died. This was the first use of biological war -fare in human history.
The easy victory, further, potentiated the belief, that they were being rewarded for being good Christians.
The trend of economic and religious migration continued till 1960’s when immigrants from Asia started coming. In sharp contrast to earlier arrivals, they had passed through a process of screening which excluded all except the highly educated and whose skills were actually needed in the country. Instead of being a burden, they saved US economy billions of dollars which the country would have to spend on training physicians, educationists, engineers, scientists (roughly $200,000.00 per trainee equivalent to $one billion for 52,000 foreign trained physicians alone) that is, if they could find indigenous candidates, good enough for training in the country. The newcomers are gradually gaining influence specially the professional groups. But the unfortunate trend under the impact of international events among these immigrants too, is towards intolerance and bigotry.
Group character is passed on over generations. Australia, which was colonized by convicts, is known for the crude and rough (comparatively) language of its people. Americans have continued to cling to religion and take it rather seriously. I once went for an interview for a Medical practice in a small community in Minnesota. They were very hospitable. Their main concern was that they didn’t have a church for me.
Universal literacy, scientific advances, prosperous life style have not been able to over come its influence. They are easily moved by slogans of moral values, nature of family, definition of marriage, permissibly of abortion and morality of stem cell research. These matters, which have little impact on the life of the overwhelming majority of people, cause them to put vastly more important issues on the back burner.
Look at America today. The core of its economy was subjected to a dastardly attack on 9/11. The Government correctly went after the perceived perpetrators. It was a successful operation; Taliban and AL Qaida were demolished. Afghans were delivered from a lunatic tyranny and the people afforded a chance to develop representative and rational institutions. They have not been able to take advantage of the opportunity due to their own primitive stage of social development- they are still in tribal age.
Then, instead of confronting the source of fanaticism- Saudi Arabia- or tackling the genesis of terrorism, Israeli occupation of Palestine, ethnic cleansing perpetrated on them by the Government of the mini Hitler Sharon, the U.S. administration concocted fables of weapons of mass destruction, deluded themselves with hallucinatory visions of fawning crowds in Iraq, acclaiming U.S. forces as liberators. They dreamed of control over a large reservoir of oil and installing an effective client government. They ignored all pleas of better planning after victory. They did not pay any attention to the request of their own Generals for much larger number of troops. They belittled France, Germany and Russia and went charging into Iraq, declaring mission accomplished in a hurry, losing more lives after the declaration than before. The soldiers of the greatest power and the richest country in world history have to cannibalize broken down vehicles for armor. They did not even have adequate number of body armor.
They are still mired in the morass of popular resistance, unable to see the way out, begging the British to relieve them in Baghdad so they could spare troops for Faluga. They had to deal with the hated Shia clerics on equal terms. They are wasting billions of dollars a day with no massive oil supply in sight to pay for it They have burdened the economy with trillions of dollars in national debt, ignoring even rising unemployment figures. Instead of encouraging jobs creation, outsourcing them, overlooking 45 million Americans with no health Insurance and exhibiting shameless complacence over it all.
They had to submit to Ayatollah Sistani’s demand that general elections be held. A new Government of National unity has been installed as a result. But it is unable to deal with the insurgency because all the levers of power are in American hand. The Iraqi security forces cannot match insurgents in firepower or dedication. Many run away from confrontations. They do not want to give their lives to protect the interests of occupying forces. Many are sympathetic to insurgents.
Insurgents are undeterred by the firepower at the command of USA troops. They kill a few USA soldiers several every day and many Iraqi ones, whom they regard as collaborators.
Iraqis are worse off than ever before, worse than even under Saddam, whose regime was in the strangle hold of US/UK sanctions. I have dubbed sanctions as UK/USA, because the UN the supposedly sanctioning authority has no teeth.
All Iraqi infrastructure has been demolished. Children are dying of hunger, lack of medicines in greater numbers than ever before. There is little clean water or electric supply, industry or jobs.
One would have thought, that such an administration would be trounced in an electoral contest based on a literate, well-informed body of voters.
But no, they won because John Kerry was for women’s choice, for stem cell research and ambivalent on gay marriage.
One cannot blame corporate media. They were, if anything tilting towards Kerry. You cannot blame money. Both had it and spent it in abundance. You cannot blame the security issue; in the end people thought Kerry would be as good on the score. People knew that Kerry was far more intelligent, had far better advisers, would be as relentless in fight against terror, would be much more effective, as he could develop a true coalition and get European troops to fight in Iraq. He would be more solicitous of Israel, would abolish the irresponsible tax reduction, trim national debt, put a more humane and acceptable face on capitalism and not appoint members of the lunatic fringe to the cabinet.
It would have been a walk over but for the Christian fundamentalists who galvanized churches (Kerry is a practicing catholic- yet catholic bishops campaigned against him), exhorted voters, transported them to polling booths, launched smear campaigns on T.V., told blatant lies, besmirched the honor of a highly decorated was hero (against a draft evader) so that 50% of Hispanics, normally a democratic constituency, voted for the republican ticket. Ohio, a state with large unemployment was won by the President by 135,000 votes. This all in the name of morality in a country, which has come a long way in accepting varied sexual choices, where women after several thousand years have regained equality.
Though the difference between the rich and poor has widened (Remember Jesus Christ favored the poor) under Bush, they still voted republican.
People were taken in, as people usually are, perhaps consoling themselves with the thought that priests will intercede for them in the after world, perhaps priests reminding them of Christ pronouncement that the poor will inherit the kingdom of heaven, implying that they won’t if they disobeyed the priest.
One can go on conjecturing but there is no denying the fact that bigotry cost Kerry the election.
Fundamentalism in the U.S.A is a part of the trend all the world over. It cannot be curbed by combating it in this country alone. Injustice, poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance, superstition, religious fanaticism, racism, economic exploitation, and dominance of Capital will have to be dealt with on a global scale.
STYLE
The term was coined by the religious right in the nine-twenties in the USA to define themselves. To understand the background of fundamentalism, a brief survey of Socio-Religious evolution would be essential.
Religion is a highly resilient institution. One may speak of it as a spent force at ones own peril. It has been written off many times only to come back up with renewed vigor.
One may justifiably say that religion is as old as human kind. Humans evolved into the current form for as Homo sapiens about 1.7 million years ago. The first of the species must have reacted to natural phenomenon instinctively running away from fires, seeking shelter from flood and hurricanes. They may have developed the faculty of analysis but did not yet have any vehicle to develop a body of knowledge. They did not have a spoken language.
Once spoken language evolved, organized thought was possible. Analysis observation, conclusion, interpretation and philosophy would be no use unless one could share the thoughts with others or learn and teach.
Written language was to come much later. Organized thought pre-dated it by unknown millennia.
At some point a group of people must have tried to make sense of hot and cold weather, high and low tide, rain and drought, storms and floods etc. Some were beneficial, others harmful.. It may have dawned on some bright person that there was a purpose, a design or an agency behind it.
The primal instinct was self-preservation. Good was what promoted it, evil led to its retardation? A natural disaster may have coincidentally followed an evil deed for example theft. It might have led to the belief that a super human agency had sent the calamity as collective punishment. Some incidental act may have been followed by abatement of a forest fire.
Lo and behold, something had propitiated the mover of fires.
Other animals were physically stronger. A tiger could easily kill a person but several persons, better still, armed with sticks and stones could chase it away. Most animals could run faster. In order to kill them for food, preventing their escape by posting persons at exit routes would be effective. Stealth would be effective too. Take an animal unawares; they did not have the human faculty of planning and forethought. If you tempted the animal with food, trained and beat them into submission, you could use them for transport and heavy work like tilling. Females of some species would provide milk, a nourishing and safe diet.
So we now have, analytical thought, organization and collective action, albiet at a very primitive level. We have a hunter-gatherer society. There is no stable abode. Groups travel, after resources of one area have been exhausted. Diet is meat, berries, and fruits. Fire as protection against elements and predators is known, cooking is probably not. Meat is eaten raw (much like today’s rare beef steak in the USA). A fire probably burnt down a forest roasting animals. Finding no other meat, people may have been forced to eat “cooked” meat. They probably didn’t like it, but may have discovered, that it kept longer with out going bad.
We don’t have a concept of property in terms of owning dwelling or land yet. There is no specialization except perhaps; that men went out to hunt and women managed the family. Polyandry was practiced; men were away for days or even weeks, leaving a few for guard duty. It was the matriachal stage of development. The same women had to look after returning providers.
Population increased. Hunting grounds became insufficient, climatic change may have intervened. It became increasingly difficult to draw sustenance from known areas. Mass starvation must have been a recurring event. Thievery and later robbery must have been invented. The disruptive causes must have had deleterious effect; preventive measures must have been taken.
Primitive law and order came into being.
Naturally occurring grain bushes must have been noticed, how seeds when water was available water and exposed to sunshine grew into plants, as did fruit and berries. Some group of people may have decided to stay put in a place with plenty of grain. They were eaten raw till an accidental fire produced cooked rice, as meat had been “cooked” previously. Cooked rice went down the throat more easily. Lentils and vegetables were soon tenderized by cooking.
Once settled on land, elements couldn’t be escaped from, as easily. One had to build shelter. Someone noticed the beneficial effect of certain plants/leaves/root and he/she became a part time medicine person. Some could build better. Some one may have cried aloud that an impending storm would go away. It may have passed them by, and we have a spirit man.
But all work was communal, though specialization was developing.
With increasing complexity of society tribes arose, which congregated with other tribes for exchange of goods and mutual protection, thus organized life is taking shape now. Tribal heads must have been chosen by election or consensus and over time must have assumed hereditary rights. Town/city government must have been formed with hierarchical structure.
We have a definite concept of property necessitating legitimate children who would inherit and law and order agencies, which would protect it. Rulers who could lead wars of plunder or defense became a necessity.
It is final goodbye to equality of man and woman and to matriarchal society.
We have seen that the concept of super natural was necessitated to ward off natural calamities, flood, lightening and pestilence, but it was hitherto mostly an individual, a spirit man to propitiate the “movers of disasters” which may have been named gods, but they were attributed properties akin to human ones. They had body, sex, families, hierarchy, moods, and sentiments; only they were far more potent and rather short tempered. One had to watch ones step with them. A pantheon of gods for lightening, fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, evolved.
But it was not organized religion.
The need for organized religion came with the concept of property. In order to establish legitimacy of birth, some kind of formality sanctioned by the spirit man must be gone through. Retribution for infidelity must have been threatened to keep hitherto free spirits in line. You could post guards, but they would be more effective if thieves were made to fear perdition. The rulers had their soldiers but to keep the undesirables and rebels under control Assistance of the spirit man was needed to provide legitimacy to the ruler. The spirit man had to be fed, clothed, housed and a place for his incantations provided. He returned the compliment. Divine right of king is in its incipient stage.
Not very secure in their jobs, spirit men must have organized, much like in later artisan guilds. Organized religion is raising its head.
With time, better grasp of natural phenomenon, body of accumulated human experience called knowledge is preserved. Population explodes and society develops into kingdoms, later into empires.
With enhanced knowledge of natural phenomenon, empirical religion gives way to inspirational, which is better able to protect the status quo.
Pharaohs preceded Judaic prophets but did not have “divine” religions. Chinese and Indians had earth-based religions too.
Now temporal and spiritual offices are combined in a prophet who wages wars to subdue non-believers, unless they capitulate without aggression (much as Libya did after assault on Iraq). Property was acquired, as a reward for converting the heathen (oil in recompense for ‘liberating’ Iraq).
Christianity was a revolt against the inequities, the injustices and avarice of the priestly order. The priests conspired with their foreign over lords to quash the teachings of one of its own, as he was bucking the trend. Status quo and privelege had to be ensured even at the cast of crucifying a member of the brotherhood of priests. The new religion went under ground. Bible was compiled some sixty years after crucifixation.
Church eventually becomes predominant after a Roman emperor converts to the religion. From a band of fugitives it metamorphoses to a pillar of establishment, stifling knowledge, assigning stations in life, forcibly keeping vassals, lords and kings in their respective places.
Dark age prevailed. There was dire poverty, ignorance, frequent pestilence and slavery, one law for the ruler, another for the ruled, palaces for nobles and bishops and hovels for their followers, wasteful abundance for the rich and maybe one meal a day for the poor. Religion protected privelege.
I am talking of medieval Europe. Please keep in mind; this inspirational religion had rebelled against established order, preaching quality and justice.
While Europe was shackled by a subverted religious order, another religion arose in the unlikeliest of places- Mecca. This religion also rebelled against established order, preaching equality, justice and peace but its egalitarian aspect was overcome rather quickly (fifty three years) by establishment and it was used as an tool for empire building much as Judaism and Christianity had done before it.
The prophet of Islam had much greater early success than Judaic prophets or Jesus, perhaps because he attained prophethood at the age of forty, escaped assassination, perhaps because communications and travel were much faster and he came from an important though impoverished tribe. Arabs though illiterate were independent and Mecca was the crossroad of trade routes.
Between Hijra AD622 (migration) to Medina when effective state building started and AD632- just ten years- he had the whole Arabian Peninsula under his control.
Jesus Christ, on the other hand lived in a country ruled by foreigners and unlike Muhammad had to challenge the entrenched priestly order, whose worldly privileges were at stake and which did not hesitate in getting their Roman overlords to prosecute him. He was crucified when he was thirty-three.
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State and religion went hand in hand in Europe and in Asia too after the advent of Islam.
Many pagan rites had crept in Christianity, time was ripe for a reformist movement, Puritanism and Protestantism supplanted Catholicism in large parts of Europe. Among the most interesting reasons for discarding Catholicism, was king Henry XIII’s desire to keep on marrying and popes refusal to keep on sanctioning them. Church had come to rival state; banishing Catholicism brought huge church properties under the king’s control in England. Separation of church and state was implicit in reformation, though religion continued to be used by European government to aid and abet colonization.
The decline and fall of Muslim empires led Muslims to attribute their sorry state to non-performance of religious rites. They were no longer good Muslims, so God did not favor them anymore.
A small minority, however, attributed the sorry state to lack of education, innovation, initiative, and drive. As a corollary they put Europeans on a pedestal, idealizing them, aping their mores, customs and traditions. They had to learn European languages of necessity. But this put them at a great disadvantage in education, spending years learning a foreign language before getting a grip on other subjects such as science, mathematics etc.
The small minority of Muslims who believed that their redemption lay in adopting European ways, naturally, adopted liberal thought as well, and were the ones who led the war of liberation in India and Africa (In Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq it was the struggle against national decay and subservience to the west). Clerics did not take active part in the struggle, in fact many opposed it on the grounds that God will take of everything, if one followed his commandments and other equally spurious reasons abhorrent to the word and spirit of religion.
When leaders failed to deliver and spurred by further humiliations, establishment of Israel, defeats of 1967, 1973 at the hands of Israel, 1971 civil war in East Pakistan, Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Muslims aided and abetted by the West in general and USA in particular, financed by Saudis (to save their own skin from indigenous fanatics) embraced fanaticism and resorted to terrorism.
Europeans have, by and large, remained free of fundamentalism, keeping state and religion separate and vigorously reinforcing the policy, as the recent French law-banning exhibition of religious symbols in state institutions.
Americans bucked the European trend. U.S. constitution does ordain separation of church and state, but attempts at subversion and neo-conservative interpretation of the constitution have been going on for a long time.
In order to understand why (Americans North and South) and Europe took divergent paths in the matter of religion in daily life and Government, one has to look at the inception of the country. Europeans migrated to Americas for a number of reasons, predominant being economic and religious persecution. A small percentage took to the boats with dreams of fortune, but vast majority were escaping starvation. Destitute masses have to seek solace in and hope for divine intervention. They become very religious. Victims of religious persecution give up hearth, home and even life for their beliefs. They would not be inclined to liberal thought.
The immigrants came upon a vast land, sparsely populated by unsophisticated people, who had been isolated from the rest of the world for a long time and who had been left behind, in the rest of the world’s march to scientific, industrial development. What was even more important, they had acquired powerful tools of war. They were overpowered easily, by a combination of trickery, germ warfare (they were rewarded for their hospitality to the starving immigrants, by a gift of blankets impregnated with small pox. Not having been exposed to the disease before and totally lacking immunity, untold numbers died. This was the first use of biological war -fare in human history.
The easy victory, further, potentiated the belief, that they were being rewarded for being good Christians.
The trend of economic and religious migration continued till 1960’s when immigrants from Asia started coming. In sharp contrast to earlier arrivals, they had passed through a process of screening which excluded all except the highly educated and whose skills were actually needed in the country. Instead of being a burden, they saved US economy billions of dollars which the country would have to spend on training physicians, educationists, engineers, scientists (roughly $200,000.00 per trainee equivalent to $one billion for 52,000 foreign trained physicians alone) that is, if they could find indigenous candidates, good enough for training in the country. The newcomers are gradually gaining influence specially the professional groups. But the unfortunate trend under the impact of international events among these immigrants too, is towards intolerance and bigotry.
Group character is passed on over generations. Australia, which was colonized by convicts, is known for the crude and rough (comparatively) language of its people. Americans have continued to cling to religion and take it rather seriously. I once went for an interview for a Medical practice in a small community in Minnesota. They were very hospitable. Their main concern was that they didn’t have a church for me.
Universal literacy, scientific advances, prosperous life style have not been able to over come its influence. They are easily moved by slogans of moral values, nature of family, definition of marriage, permissibly of abortion and morality of stem cell research. These matters, which have little impact on the life of the overwhelming majority of people, cause them to put vastly more important issues on the back burner.
Look at America today. The core of its economy was subjected to a dastardly attack on 9/11. The Government correctly went after the perceived perpetrators. It was a successful operation; Taliban and AL Qaida were demolished. Afghans were delivered from a lunatic tyranny and the people afforded a chance to develop representative and rational institutions. They have not been able to take advantage of the opportunity due to their own primitive stage of social development- they are still in tribal age.
Then, instead of confronting the source of fanaticism- Saudi Arabia- or tackling the genesis of terrorism, Israeli occupation of Palestine, ethnic cleansing perpetrated on them by the Government of the mini Hitler Sharon, the U.S. administration concocted fables of weapons of mass destruction, deluded themselves with hallucinatory visions of fawning crowds in Iraq, acclaiming U.S. forces as liberators. They dreamed of control over a large reservoir of oil and installing an effective client government. They ignored all pleas of better planning after victory. They did not pay any attention to the request of their own Generals for much larger number of troops. They belittled France, Germany and Russia and went charging into Iraq, declaring mission accomplished in a hurry, losing more lives after the declaration than before. The soldiers of the greatest power and the richest country in world history have to cannibalize broken down vehicles for armor. They did not even have adequate number of body armor.
They are still mired in the morass of popular resistance, unable to see the way out, begging the British to relieve them in Baghdad so they could spare troops for Faluga. They had to deal with the hated Shia clerics on equal terms. They are wasting billions of dollars a day with no massive oil supply in sight to pay for it They have burdened the economy with trillions of dollars in national debt, ignoring even rising unemployment figures. Instead of encouraging jobs creation, outsourcing them, overlooking 45 million Americans with no health Insurance and exhibiting shameless complacence over it all.
They had to submit to Ayatollah Sistani’s demand that general elections be held. A new Government of National unity has been installed as a result. But it is unable to deal with the insurgency because all the levers of power are in American hand. The Iraqi security forces cannot match insurgents in firepower or dedication. Many run away from confrontations. They do not want to give their lives to protect the interests of occupying forces. Many are sympathetic to insurgents.
Insurgents are undeterred by the firepower at the command of USA troops. They kill a few USA soldiers several every day and many Iraqi ones, whom they regard as collaborators.
Iraqis are worse off than ever before, worse than even under Saddam, whose regime was in the strangle hold of US/UK sanctions. I have dubbed sanctions as UK/USA, because the UN the supposedly sanctioning authority has no teeth.
All Iraqi infrastructure has been demolished. Children are dying of hunger, lack of medicines in greater numbers than ever before. There is little clean water or electric supply, industry or jobs.
One would have thought, that such an administration would be trounced in an electoral contest based on a literate, well-informed body of voters.
But no, they won because John Kerry was for women’s choice, for stem cell research and ambivalent on gay marriage.
One cannot blame corporate media. They were, if anything tilting towards Kerry. You cannot blame money. Both had it and spent it in abundance. You cannot blame the security issue; in the end people thought Kerry would be as good on the score. People knew that Kerry was far more intelligent, had far better advisers, would be as relentless in fight against terror, would be much more effective, as he could develop a true coalition and get European troops to fight in Iraq. He would be more solicitous of Israel, would abolish the irresponsible tax reduction, trim national debt, put a more humane and acceptable face on capitalism and not appoint members of the lunatic fringe to the cabinet.
It would have been a walk over but for the Christian fundamentalists who galvanized churches (Kerry is a practicing catholic- yet catholic bishops campaigned against him), exhorted voters, transported them to polling booths, launched smear campaigns on T.V., told blatant lies, besmirched the honor of a highly decorated was hero (against a draft evader) so that 50% of Hispanics, normally a democratic constituency, voted for the republican ticket. Ohio, a state with large unemployment was won by the President by 135,000 votes. This all in the name of morality in a country, which has come a long way in accepting varied sexual choices, where women after several thousand years have regained equality.
Though the difference between the rich and poor has widened (Remember Jesus Christ favored the poor) under Bush, they still voted republican.
People were taken in, as people usually are, perhaps consoling themselves with the thought that priests will intercede for them in the after world, perhaps priests reminding them of Christ pronouncement that the poor will inherit the kingdom of heaven, implying that they won’t if they disobeyed the priest.
One can go on conjecturing but there is no denying the fact that bigotry cost Kerry the election.
Fundamentalism in the U.S.A is a part of the trend all the world over. It cannot be curbed by combating it in this country alone. Injustice, poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance, superstition, religious fanaticism, racism, economic exploitation, and dominance of Capital will have to be dealt with on a global scale.
In sefense of Democracy
IN Defense OF DEMOCRACY
I recently came across a rather startling statement that Hitler came through democracy. The statement would be akin to a statement that Nathu Ram Godse (Mahtama Gandhi’s assassin), Yazid (murderer of the family of prophet of Islam) and Judas came respectively through Hindu, Islam and Christian religions. If a building has rotten foundations, it collapses. Democracy minus the foundation of robust economy, high literacy, developed industry and vibrant Capital will collapse. Germany had been devastated during World War I. Hitler rose over its ashes and ruins. Godse belonged to the rabid fringe of Hindu fundamentalists. Yazid had tribal scores to settle. Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver. Not one of these renegades had any legitimacy in the creed they professed.
Capitalism is an economic system through which entrepreneurs enhance capital by a) adding value of labor to investment b) not paying labor wages commensurate with their work c) by paying themselves all the surplus value d) re-investing what is left after paying for their lavish life-style e) paying labor just enough to keep them fit for work and stifling competition by 1), forcing them into bankruptcy 2), taking them over 3), becoming a partnership/corporation 4), capturing/ controlling overseas markets and resources ( oil, minerals, agriculture) by whatever it takes. The process includes colonization, installing client governments, bribing key individuals, subverting governments, organizing military coups and if nothing else works naked aggression.
The highest, to date, form of Capitalism is Global Monopoly Capital. Instead of developing national industries, Capital goes wherever the cheapest labor is. The idea is veneration of enhanced return. Idol may be in any temple; you go there to worship it.
Examples of each method are galore and should not be difficult to find with a discerning sight and mind.
I would like to mention one rather obscure and subtle method namely genetically modified seeds, which will give only one crop making farmers in India dependent upon International “Genetic Cartel”.
Capitalism needs democracy, as the latter provides control under the facade of people’s free will expressed through the ballot, at the same time taking away control of assets from feudal lords (most western countries are long past the feudal stage) who are by their very nature incapable of fully exploiting the resources.
Democracy/public opinion and elected leaders can be and are totally controlled, as all media are controlled by Capital. Labor unions and judiciary are easily suborned. One sees, hears, reads what capitalists want us to. Capitalists can hire/buy all skills/intellect/academics they want. One can, any day, hear some academic spouting absurdities. Selling ones soul and conscience is the oldest profession- if the seller is socially weak it is called prostitution.
Capitalists and their agents have all the levers of power in their hands, so if public opinion cannot be molded their way, it is ignored, as Tony Blair did by taking the UK into war on Iraq against the will of eighty percent of the British public. George Bush got away with it because media in mainstream media in the USA is owned lock stock and barrel by Capital and manages to misinform US public much better than the British media do. Kerry promised to do more of the same only more efficiently.
U.S.A managed to build a coalition of vassal states and wannabes (of the important status of being US Lap dogs like Britian). France and Germany want to be the favorite lap dogs too, a position jealousy guarded by Britain. They could not get it so they pouted and kept away. Japan like a lavishly kept courtesan sent token of support. Russians overwhelmed by schizophrenia of a recent grand past and present destitution, waited for crumbles to fall of the table. UNO a collective of Jackals, ruled over by the USA made pious noises. China bided its time.
Capitalist governments fight with each other for resources, markets and colonies. Democracy is a convenient and respectable flag.
Germany coveted the colonies Britain, France, Italy and even the lowly Holland, Spain and Portugal had. They couldn’t expand into Africa and Asia, so decided to have a go at Eastern Europe. Mafia Dons don’t like new rivals. They gang up on him. Other European and the U.S. government ganged up on Germany- ergo World War I. Germany was defeated, humiliated and restricted.
Next to Japanese, Germans are the most vigorous and disciplined people. It did not take very long for them to rise again and this time they sought salvation through fascism led by, the so far, most successful demagogue in history. Hitler united them, gave them hope and focus and unleashed their tremendous energy.
Germany easily defeated countries of continental Europe. Britain accepted humiliating terms. Russia signed a peace pact. Hitler did not bother to consult with capitalists. He won’t rest on his laurels, take a breather and then go on. And over extended himself.
A glance at capitalist societies will tell you that the public is given amenities in times of crisis, which are then gradually taken away. All west European countries had cradle to grave welfare systems- health, education, unemployment and disability benefits. Over the years since WWII the benefits have been gradually withdrawn by assuredly democratic means. Residual amenities are left only in Northern European countries. In the UK Margaret Thatcher dismantled socialist program. Tony Blair’s new labor is somewhere to the right of Margaret Thatcher’s conservative predecessor Edward Heath. In exactly the same fashion programs introduced by FDR and Lyndon Johnson are being whittled away by their successors, Democrats and republicans alike.
Hitler grew too big for his britches. Europe was impotent. Churchill, acknowledged war monger and wiliest of all connivers was brought in. He seduced the U.S.A., and arranged to have a U.S. plane downed off the coast of Spain and a U.S. boat torpedoed in Atlantic. FDR enamored of the seduction, helped along by ignoring intelligence reports of Japanese designs on Pearl Harbor (It won’t be surprising if it comes out in 30-40 years that intelligence reports on 9/11 attacks were similarly ignored-deliberately). Americans joined the war.
Japanese under fascist rule too, behaved as fascist do. Not satisfied with easy victories in Asia, they had to attack the U.S.A.
Hitler, ignoring history and good sense, attacked Russia.
World War II obliterated Germany and Japan. Italy escaped the worst by overthrowing Mussolini and joining victors just before the end. De Gaulle of France, exponent per excellence of “Me Tooism” bluffed his way into the ranks of victors. U.S.A. emerged as the number one super power. They obliterated two Japanese cities quite unnecessarily from Military standpoint. Japanese were already suing for peace. They wanted to prove the potency of the bomb on live subjects and impress Soviet Union. The second nuclear bomb was used actually to make scientifically sure that the first one was not a fluke. A democratic government was promoting science!
Post-World War II, Europeans were too weak to retain colonies. The concept of client states was developed and forcefully imposed. The list of such states is long- all Middle East, Africa (except for South Africa- then a fascist state- has since joined the ranks- Pakistan, far Eastern countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand. Japan was directly colonized and was allowed to join the Capitalist club on pledge of good behavior. India with a nationalist government took several decades to succumb.
To forestall free and genuine election and possibility of a national government emerging, military was installed in Pakistan. A million and more were killed by the army in Indonesia. A nationalist government was overthrown in Iran and a jackal re-installed on the throne. Iraq after overthrowing monarchy slid into fascism, was used to wage war on and debilitate a nationalist, though a theocratic, Government in Iran Nasserism gave way to Sadaat and worse- Mubarak, whom Tariq Ali called caddy to Bush. Tariq should not have been carried away by emotion and insulted caddies.
Wars are being waged, on a continuous basis, all in the name of democracy, liberty and human rights. Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Gulf I, Gulf II, the list is endless. Israel is running a perpetual campaign of attrition on Palestinian and other Arabs. It is the only democratic state in Mid-East!
Covert wars are run simultaneously. Philippines, Thailand, Sudan, Congo, (remember Lumumba) Algeria, South Africa and many other countries, too many to enumerate all, have been violated in turn.
Aggression with overwhelming force spawns hate and helplessness. The vanquished are unable to fight pitched battles with forces of democracy. They use covert means and indulge in suicide bombings. They are terrorists as Palestinians are branded, never mind all the UN resolutions asking Israel to withdraw to pre -1967 borders. Sharon, deserving the rank of a war criminal by any measure and perpetrator of genocide was acclaimed and received with due honors in all (except in one country in Northern Europe which wants to try him as such) democracies.
Readers must wonder, why having castigated Capitalism, do I advocate it? The reason is simple. It is a necessary step to socialist dispensation. Of all the non-socialist systems, it is the least evil system evolved by human mind so far. It is the strongest. Pragmatism would ordain. “If you can’t fight them, join them”. Idealism would goad at your conscience to undermine the system from with in.
Feudalism, in this day and age, is an anachronism. Under the system a cabal of feudal lords- land, resources and the government holds all levers of power. There is no competition for efficient production, so there is little development. The lord owns the vassals body and soul. Brides unless they seem very unattractive and undesirable to the overlord, spend the first night with him. Yes in this day and age in Pakistani Baluchistan, where a feudal lord boasted to a foreign journalist that he killed his first man at the age of nine. Education is suppressed. Feudal lords threaten, abduct, rape and decapitate teachers. The more enlightened ones ask the teachers to go live in cities and visit only on payday. Some even send salaries to teacher’s homes permitting visits only when school is being inspected. They even obstruct road construction, not to speak of industries in their area.
Theocratic states stifle freedom of expression/action/organization in the name of religion – Iran is the best example. There is a supreme religious council which can disqualify candidates for the parliament, declare an election void, over rule the duly elected president, overturn any judicial decision, order arrests without due process, keep people in jail without trial, and reject budget passed by a parliament. It is answerable only to the supreme religious loader who is answerable to the “vanished” Imam, who not being around, can’t over rule his deputy. The deputy in effect becomes spiritual and lay dictator. If one wants to entertain liberal thought, be open minded and inquisitive, tolerant of other religions and view, this kind of state will not be very comfortable.
Under fascism, a cult of personality is built around the leader. Everyone is subservient to him; all the systems Judiciary, Education, armed forces, civil service, business, commerce, industry, and all organs of the state do his bidding. A stratified ruling class executes his orders. All dissidence is clamped down; any defiance is at the pain of severe penalties. The leader- some of the kind have declared themselves redeemer- may declare war and lead the country to oblivion. An underclass is developed for manual, labor intensive and other less “worthy” work. Undesirables can be sent to concentration camps, made to do hazardous work, substitute guinea pigs for biological experiments or be simply exterminated. Unless one manages to get born in the ruling class and to remain on the right side of powers that be, most if not all the time, difference of opinion can be injurious to personal health and welfare. Pakistan enjoyed a mini fascist in Zulfiqar Bhutto.
Let us look at communism. On paper it looks very good. It certainly has a future. But it has a past too.
All the workers, academicians and scientists are empowered. Hard work, sincerity, honesty and integrity are rewarded. Family background (unless capitalist and noble in which case you have to work at declassing yourself as Zhou en Lai successfully did) is irrelevant, one can aspire to top rank in any field and get it with persistence.
But in practice things are very different. Communists took over in Russia, ditched their democratic partners and were assailed by democracies of the world. They successfully thwarted Capitalist attempts by appealing to Russian nationalist. WWII of course exhausted Russia and their new enemies; otherwise white (non communist) Russians with the help of capitalists may have been able to run over communists. It was an idealistic period of Lenin. People believed in the ideology and gave their all in saving the state. Lenin’s death was followed by a power struggle in which Stalin Trotsky.
Stalin was beset by saboteurs from with in and unabated hostility from with out. He had to sideline revisionists in high places. He managed to consolidate party rule. But he suffered from a historic handicap. His people were technologically very backward. He worked hard and exhorted others to do the same. The country made tremendous progress.
He bluffed his way through in diplomatic parleys. He even agreed to a compact with the devil and signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. In a brilliant tactical move, Russians let German Panzer divisions advance over scorched earth to inevitable attrition. Hezbullah had planned the same fate for Israelis. The latter got wise to the idea and decided to accept humiliation at the hands of a much weaker adversary. A common enemy leads to strange bed fellowship. Democracies pitched in with help-enough to keep Russia from going under, but not adequate to truly empower them. But the vitality of the system was such that Russian armies over ran half of Europe. The country matched the Capitalist combine in military and scientific prowess. It managed to break American monopoly over nuclear power soon enough. It sent the first man into space.
But Stalin had obviously not been able to do enough. He was, after a short pause, followed by that bumpkin Khruschev. He inflicted a lot of damage. The party recovered, slid into ossified mind set, let itself be led into adventurism and was taken over by Gorbachev who did not lose much time in letting the gains of six decades slip through his hands.
Apologists tend to blame fifth columnists for the debacle. They hold Capitalist intrigues for the downfall of USSR. That may be all true. But that forcefully indicates the need for complete re-evaluation of strategy. Are socialist states viable in isolation? Can they expect any quarter from Capitalist states? Can they escape unscathed from diligent machinations of their mortal enemies? Is peaceful co-existence a mirage? Answer to these questions will decide the future of socialism.
That leaves us with capitalist democracy, which for all its fault has certain positive points. If you stay with in the law of the land, you have freedom of expression. State does provide, though grudgingly certain basic services to the poorest and the indigent (welfare and Medicare in USA). If you join the system, work hard and have average intelligence you can be successful. Law enforcement and judicial system is generally fair (except in national emergencies like war). Though difficult to access and nearly overwhelmed by capitalist controlled media, dissident opinion is allowed. (Link and FSTV, Pacifica Radio etc). NGOs like Human rights organization do exist (ACLU, Human Rights Watch). Tariq Ali calls them WGOS-Western government organizations. You can practice your religion, as long as you don’t preach hatred for other creeds. Non-capitalist political parties are allowed to exist, though admittedly they have little impact. Trade union activity is allowed, though subverted by dirty tricks and harassed by the new strategy of out sourcing, sweat shops, local and international.
It will come down on you like a load of bricks if you try to change the basic structure. If you cannot accept the boundaries, be prepared to lose all.
I recently came across a rather startling statement that Hitler came through democracy. The statement would be akin to a statement that Nathu Ram Godse (Mahtama Gandhi’s assassin), Yazid (murderer of the family of prophet of Islam) and Judas came respectively through Hindu, Islam and Christian religions. If a building has rotten foundations, it collapses. Democracy minus the foundation of robust economy, high literacy, developed industry and vibrant Capital will collapse. Germany had been devastated during World War I. Hitler rose over its ashes and ruins. Godse belonged to the rabid fringe of Hindu fundamentalists. Yazid had tribal scores to settle. Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver. Not one of these renegades had any legitimacy in the creed they professed.
Capitalism is an economic system through which entrepreneurs enhance capital by a) adding value of labor to investment b) not paying labor wages commensurate with their work c) by paying themselves all the surplus value d) re-investing what is left after paying for their lavish life-style e) paying labor just enough to keep them fit for work and stifling competition by 1), forcing them into bankruptcy 2), taking them over 3), becoming a partnership/corporation 4), capturing/ controlling overseas markets and resources ( oil, minerals, agriculture) by whatever it takes. The process includes colonization, installing client governments, bribing key individuals, subverting governments, organizing military coups and if nothing else works naked aggression.
The highest, to date, form of Capitalism is Global Monopoly Capital. Instead of developing national industries, Capital goes wherever the cheapest labor is. The idea is veneration of enhanced return. Idol may be in any temple; you go there to worship it.
Examples of each method are galore and should not be difficult to find with a discerning sight and mind.
I would like to mention one rather obscure and subtle method namely genetically modified seeds, which will give only one crop making farmers in India dependent upon International “Genetic Cartel”.
Capitalism needs democracy, as the latter provides control under the facade of people’s free will expressed through the ballot, at the same time taking away control of assets from feudal lords (most western countries are long past the feudal stage) who are by their very nature incapable of fully exploiting the resources.
Democracy/public opinion and elected leaders can be and are totally controlled, as all media are controlled by Capital. Labor unions and judiciary are easily suborned. One sees, hears, reads what capitalists want us to. Capitalists can hire/buy all skills/intellect/academics they want. One can, any day, hear some academic spouting absurdities. Selling ones soul and conscience is the oldest profession- if the seller is socially weak it is called prostitution.
Capitalists and their agents have all the levers of power in their hands, so if public opinion cannot be molded their way, it is ignored, as Tony Blair did by taking the UK into war on Iraq against the will of eighty percent of the British public. George Bush got away with it because media in mainstream media in the USA is owned lock stock and barrel by Capital and manages to misinform US public much better than the British media do. Kerry promised to do more of the same only more efficiently.
U.S.A managed to build a coalition of vassal states and wannabes (of the important status of being US Lap dogs like Britian). France and Germany want to be the favorite lap dogs too, a position jealousy guarded by Britain. They could not get it so they pouted and kept away. Japan like a lavishly kept courtesan sent token of support. Russians overwhelmed by schizophrenia of a recent grand past and present destitution, waited for crumbles to fall of the table. UNO a collective of Jackals, ruled over by the USA made pious noises. China bided its time.
Capitalist governments fight with each other for resources, markets and colonies. Democracy is a convenient and respectable flag.
Germany coveted the colonies Britain, France, Italy and even the lowly Holland, Spain and Portugal had. They couldn’t expand into Africa and Asia, so decided to have a go at Eastern Europe. Mafia Dons don’t like new rivals. They gang up on him. Other European and the U.S. government ganged up on Germany- ergo World War I. Germany was defeated, humiliated and restricted.
Next to Japanese, Germans are the most vigorous and disciplined people. It did not take very long for them to rise again and this time they sought salvation through fascism led by, the so far, most successful demagogue in history. Hitler united them, gave them hope and focus and unleashed their tremendous energy.
Germany easily defeated countries of continental Europe. Britain accepted humiliating terms. Russia signed a peace pact. Hitler did not bother to consult with capitalists. He won’t rest on his laurels, take a breather and then go on. And over extended himself.
A glance at capitalist societies will tell you that the public is given amenities in times of crisis, which are then gradually taken away. All west European countries had cradle to grave welfare systems- health, education, unemployment and disability benefits. Over the years since WWII the benefits have been gradually withdrawn by assuredly democratic means. Residual amenities are left only in Northern European countries. In the UK Margaret Thatcher dismantled socialist program. Tony Blair’s new labor is somewhere to the right of Margaret Thatcher’s conservative predecessor Edward Heath. In exactly the same fashion programs introduced by FDR and Lyndon Johnson are being whittled away by their successors, Democrats and republicans alike.
Hitler grew too big for his britches. Europe was impotent. Churchill, acknowledged war monger and wiliest of all connivers was brought in. He seduced the U.S.A., and arranged to have a U.S. plane downed off the coast of Spain and a U.S. boat torpedoed in Atlantic. FDR enamored of the seduction, helped along by ignoring intelligence reports of Japanese designs on Pearl Harbor (It won’t be surprising if it comes out in 30-40 years that intelligence reports on 9/11 attacks were similarly ignored-deliberately). Americans joined the war.
Japanese under fascist rule too, behaved as fascist do. Not satisfied with easy victories in Asia, they had to attack the U.S.A.
Hitler, ignoring history and good sense, attacked Russia.
World War II obliterated Germany and Japan. Italy escaped the worst by overthrowing Mussolini and joining victors just before the end. De Gaulle of France, exponent per excellence of “Me Tooism” bluffed his way into the ranks of victors. U.S.A. emerged as the number one super power. They obliterated two Japanese cities quite unnecessarily from Military standpoint. Japanese were already suing for peace. They wanted to prove the potency of the bomb on live subjects and impress Soviet Union. The second nuclear bomb was used actually to make scientifically sure that the first one was not a fluke. A democratic government was promoting science!
Post-World War II, Europeans were too weak to retain colonies. The concept of client states was developed and forcefully imposed. The list of such states is long- all Middle East, Africa (except for South Africa- then a fascist state- has since joined the ranks- Pakistan, far Eastern countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand. Japan was directly colonized and was allowed to join the Capitalist club on pledge of good behavior. India with a nationalist government took several decades to succumb.
To forestall free and genuine election and possibility of a national government emerging, military was installed in Pakistan. A million and more were killed by the army in Indonesia. A nationalist government was overthrown in Iran and a jackal re-installed on the throne. Iraq after overthrowing monarchy slid into fascism, was used to wage war on and debilitate a nationalist, though a theocratic, Government in Iran Nasserism gave way to Sadaat and worse- Mubarak, whom Tariq Ali called caddy to Bush. Tariq should not have been carried away by emotion and insulted caddies.
Wars are being waged, on a continuous basis, all in the name of democracy, liberty and human rights. Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Gulf I, Gulf II, the list is endless. Israel is running a perpetual campaign of attrition on Palestinian and other Arabs. It is the only democratic state in Mid-East!
Covert wars are run simultaneously. Philippines, Thailand, Sudan, Congo, (remember Lumumba) Algeria, South Africa and many other countries, too many to enumerate all, have been violated in turn.
Aggression with overwhelming force spawns hate and helplessness. The vanquished are unable to fight pitched battles with forces of democracy. They use covert means and indulge in suicide bombings. They are terrorists as Palestinians are branded, never mind all the UN resolutions asking Israel to withdraw to pre -1967 borders. Sharon, deserving the rank of a war criminal by any measure and perpetrator of genocide was acclaimed and received with due honors in all (except in one country in Northern Europe which wants to try him as such) democracies.
Readers must wonder, why having castigated Capitalism, do I advocate it? The reason is simple. It is a necessary step to socialist dispensation. Of all the non-socialist systems, it is the least evil system evolved by human mind so far. It is the strongest. Pragmatism would ordain. “If you can’t fight them, join them”. Idealism would goad at your conscience to undermine the system from with in.
Feudalism, in this day and age, is an anachronism. Under the system a cabal of feudal lords- land, resources and the government holds all levers of power. There is no competition for efficient production, so there is little development. The lord owns the vassals body and soul. Brides unless they seem very unattractive and undesirable to the overlord, spend the first night with him. Yes in this day and age in Pakistani Baluchistan, where a feudal lord boasted to a foreign journalist that he killed his first man at the age of nine. Education is suppressed. Feudal lords threaten, abduct, rape and decapitate teachers. The more enlightened ones ask the teachers to go live in cities and visit only on payday. Some even send salaries to teacher’s homes permitting visits only when school is being inspected. They even obstruct road construction, not to speak of industries in their area.
Theocratic states stifle freedom of expression/action/organization in the name of religion – Iran is the best example. There is a supreme religious council which can disqualify candidates for the parliament, declare an election void, over rule the duly elected president, overturn any judicial decision, order arrests without due process, keep people in jail without trial, and reject budget passed by a parliament. It is answerable only to the supreme religious loader who is answerable to the “vanished” Imam, who not being around, can’t over rule his deputy. The deputy in effect becomes spiritual and lay dictator. If one wants to entertain liberal thought, be open minded and inquisitive, tolerant of other religions and view, this kind of state will not be very comfortable.
Under fascism, a cult of personality is built around the leader. Everyone is subservient to him; all the systems Judiciary, Education, armed forces, civil service, business, commerce, industry, and all organs of the state do his bidding. A stratified ruling class executes his orders. All dissidence is clamped down; any defiance is at the pain of severe penalties. The leader- some of the kind have declared themselves redeemer- may declare war and lead the country to oblivion. An underclass is developed for manual, labor intensive and other less “worthy” work. Undesirables can be sent to concentration camps, made to do hazardous work, substitute guinea pigs for biological experiments or be simply exterminated. Unless one manages to get born in the ruling class and to remain on the right side of powers that be, most if not all the time, difference of opinion can be injurious to personal health and welfare. Pakistan enjoyed a mini fascist in Zulfiqar Bhutto.
Let us look at communism. On paper it looks very good. It certainly has a future. But it has a past too.
All the workers, academicians and scientists are empowered. Hard work, sincerity, honesty and integrity are rewarded. Family background (unless capitalist and noble in which case you have to work at declassing yourself as Zhou en Lai successfully did) is irrelevant, one can aspire to top rank in any field and get it with persistence.
But in practice things are very different. Communists took over in Russia, ditched their democratic partners and were assailed by democracies of the world. They successfully thwarted Capitalist attempts by appealing to Russian nationalist. WWII of course exhausted Russia and their new enemies; otherwise white (non communist) Russians with the help of capitalists may have been able to run over communists. It was an idealistic period of Lenin. People believed in the ideology and gave their all in saving the state. Lenin’s death was followed by a power struggle in which Stalin Trotsky.
Stalin was beset by saboteurs from with in and unabated hostility from with out. He had to sideline revisionists in high places. He managed to consolidate party rule. But he suffered from a historic handicap. His people were technologically very backward. He worked hard and exhorted others to do the same. The country made tremendous progress.
He bluffed his way through in diplomatic parleys. He even agreed to a compact with the devil and signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. In a brilliant tactical move, Russians let German Panzer divisions advance over scorched earth to inevitable attrition. Hezbullah had planned the same fate for Israelis. The latter got wise to the idea and decided to accept humiliation at the hands of a much weaker adversary. A common enemy leads to strange bed fellowship. Democracies pitched in with help-enough to keep Russia from going under, but not adequate to truly empower them. But the vitality of the system was such that Russian armies over ran half of Europe. The country matched the Capitalist combine in military and scientific prowess. It managed to break American monopoly over nuclear power soon enough. It sent the first man into space.
But Stalin had obviously not been able to do enough. He was, after a short pause, followed by that bumpkin Khruschev. He inflicted a lot of damage. The party recovered, slid into ossified mind set, let itself be led into adventurism and was taken over by Gorbachev who did not lose much time in letting the gains of six decades slip through his hands.
Apologists tend to blame fifth columnists for the debacle. They hold Capitalist intrigues for the downfall of USSR. That may be all true. But that forcefully indicates the need for complete re-evaluation of strategy. Are socialist states viable in isolation? Can they expect any quarter from Capitalist states? Can they escape unscathed from diligent machinations of their mortal enemies? Is peaceful co-existence a mirage? Answer to these questions will decide the future of socialism.
That leaves us with capitalist democracy, which for all its fault has certain positive points. If you stay with in the law of the land, you have freedom of expression. State does provide, though grudgingly certain basic services to the poorest and the indigent (welfare and Medicare in USA). If you join the system, work hard and have average intelligence you can be successful. Law enforcement and judicial system is generally fair (except in national emergencies like war). Though difficult to access and nearly overwhelmed by capitalist controlled media, dissident opinion is allowed. (Link and FSTV, Pacifica Radio etc). NGOs like Human rights organization do exist (ACLU, Human Rights Watch). Tariq Ali calls them WGOS-Western government organizations. You can practice your religion, as long as you don’t preach hatred for other creeds. Non-capitalist political parties are allowed to exist, though admittedly they have little impact. Trade union activity is allowed, though subverted by dirty tricks and harassed by the new strategy of out sourcing, sweat shops, local and international.
It will come down on you like a load of bricks if you try to change the basic structure. If you cannot accept the boundaries, be prepared to lose all.
Future of Feudalism in Pakistan
Future of Feudalism In Pakistan
Role of Global capital
Enlightened Pakistani expatriates in the USA have developed a consensus that the genesis of what ails Pakistan can be traced to the feudal system our former colonial masters imposed on India The class remained true to their “creators”. They continued to throw crumbs to the landowners till the very end of their rule. The colonizers declared them and their vassals martial race, and used them against their own countrymen for sabotage of the national movement. They also used them to fight the inter-imperial wars all over the world.
The feudal lords treated their peasants worse than one would a slave, forcing them to work in their homes with out any payment, treating the latter’s females as keeps. In the tribal regions the chief used his “seigniorial” right to spend the first night with any bride that took his fancy. The tillers of the land did the owners bidding and when Indians won a semblance of representative governments, the former served as a vote bank .
The inherent weakness of the political party of the Muslims was that, with a few honorable exceptions, the progeny of the same bunch of “traitors” led it.
A special class of feudals is worthy of note. These are hereditary Pirs .
Muslims were historically handicapped as well. They had governed India for a millennium before they had lost power to the British. They had wielded the sword, given orders and framed laws. (Lately they had given up on that too, living a hedonistic life and carrying on the momentum generated over centuries) All trade, commerce, finance and administration had been left to Hindu business class. The latter had honed their political skills and were ready to offer services to the new rulers. That was their ticket to continued prosperity. The British having wrested power from Muslims naturally discriminated against them and patronized the Hindus. After 1857 Muslims were not just discriminated against; they were actively victimized. They might have been red-Indianised but for their large numbers and a few souls who were able to analyze the situation critically and came to the rational conclusion that the only escape for them was through education and collaboration with the rulers. If the choice is between living on reservations and working for your victor, few will opt for the former.
The reformists did not simply intend to create a collaborationist class. They meant to bide their time, regain vitality and overthrow the Raj when the time was ripe. A lot of nationalist Muslims fought shoulder to shoulder with their Hindu compatriots against the British. Their ranks included a brilliant young lawyer- MA Jinnah. The Raj was not content sitting on its hands either, and developed a corp. of fifth columnists, prominent among them the feudal lords and civil servants. When the colonizers could no longer with stand the assault of independence movement, they started favoring the Muslims. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, knew this and tried his best to avoid partition of the country. He held on to the concept of a Con-Federal structure with full autonomy to the constituent units. The only subjects the center would control would be defense, foreign affairs, and communications, with further safe guards such that the majority could not take a critical decision with out concurrence of the majority of the minority members of the central assembly. He could not accept a federal structure because he knew that in addition to an adverse 3:1 ratio in population, he was burdened with the onus of leading a mass of weak reeds.
But even Jinnah, past master though he was of tactics and adept at utilizing the mistakes of opponents to his advantage, could not over come the combine of British chicanery, the alienation caused by Gandhi introducing Hindu imagery and the illusion of Ram Raj into politics, overweening ambition of Nehru, the shortsightedness and low self image of Indian National congress leaders who would not accept a weak center. In spite of the support of the viceroy, Patel and Nehru had not been able to get the better of Liaquat and his cohorts in the interim cabinet. Jinnah had out maneuvered them at every stage and they were frightened out of their wits of the possibility of the latter joining the cabinet in independent India. They were, in any case confidant or had deluded themselves into believing that Pakistan would collapse and fall in their lap as an over ripe apple. A few days after independence Patel made a speech that it was a matter of weeks or at the most a few months, the country will collapse and we will take them back on our terms and not Jinnah’s. Jinnah had to accept " a moth eaten Pakistan", moth eaten to enervate it and sow the seeds of perpetual dissension between the two newly independent countries with no experience of self government- all to the specifications of Imperial design. That led the two nations at each other's throat, whose priority should have been development of social services, jobs, industry and education.
There are credible reasons to believe that Jinnah did not envisage a permanent state of alienation between the two countries. He willed most of his assets to charitable institutions in India. He did not even sell his house in Bombay, now valued at twenty million US dollars.
India inherited the machinery of established Government, a fairly advanced infra structure, a vibrant entrepreneur'ial class, a much larger and developed economic base, and a truly bourgeois national movement and could cope much better with the dislocation and trauma of partition. Pakistan on the contrary was bereft of developed resources, administrative machinery or industry. It had a much smaller and little developed economic base. Its political party was feudal in character, not with standing Jinnah and a few Bombay and Bengali lawyers. Jinnah tried his best, openly declared that the country would not discriminate on the basis of caste or creed. He ordained separation of religion and state. But that was not to be. He died and his successors put him on a pedestal and expediently forgot his instructions.
The obscurantist Mullahs (in country and those who migrated from India), till yesterday vehement opponents of Pakistan (rank opportunists that they were, climbed on the bandwagon, and as the proverbial jackals started feeding on the trough. They also potentiated the feudal class and pronounced fatwas (religious edicts) against reforms such as civil rights, equal status for women etc. Their main thrust was, however, against land reforms, the domain of their benefactors. In 1991 A Maulana Taqi Usmani upholding the sanctity of private property in Islam declared ZAB’s land reforms repugnant to the teachings of the religion. In neighboring Afghanistan PDPA government tried to introduce land reforms but were unable to over come tribal and feudal opposition. The country led to believe that Soviet Union will inevitably support India and in the deluded vision that the West would balance any aid proffered to their rival and to offset the latter’s greater might, willingly fell into the fatal embrace of Neo-Imperialists. . (The slogan of Pakistan and Islam is in danger hamstrung the would be nationalists). India abolished the feudal system in 1948. The Eastern Wing of Pakistan abolished the system too about the same time India did, as most of the feudals there were Hindus. Feudal system still survives and thrives in what was then West Pakistan-now all of Pakistan
This should, hopefully define with sufficient clarity, the reason India and Pakistan took different paths, why army has ruled Pakistan for most of its existence and why the Indian army sharing the same British heritage has been subservient to the civilian authority.
Pakistanis in the country and expatriates differ on the emphasis they should lay on the various sections of the society for perpetuation of the core evils of violation of civil rights, subjugation of women and their status as commodity to be bartered for land or in exchange for blood money, weddings to the Quran, Honor killing, corruption, poverty, illiteracy, paucity of social services. Seventy five percent of the national budget is spent on debt servicing and armed forces, with less spent on health, education and job creation than by even the poorest of the third world countries. Correct attribution of the proportion of blame to the components of the evil Quad is of prime importance as adoption of a line of action is dependent on critical analysis. Just complaining about all the barbaric acts of the "democratically" approved Punchayat ordained rapes and murders, police, army, bureaucratic complicity in the crimes and the supine judiciary, corrupt political parties would not help much. Protest from the safe grounds of the USA will not have much impact either.
Let us take up the army first. Do we impute an independent class character to it? Army personnel are derived from all classes of the society though predominantly from a feudal/peasant base yet recruitment from urban bourgeoisie, bureaucrats classes especially in the officer corp. is significant. Progeny of lower middle class traders, clerks, teachers and such officials aspire to an armed forces commission. There may be an odd one in the lower ranks from the laborers/industrial workers, peons etc. Pathans and Punjabis supply most of the non-commissioned ranks with Sindhis and Baluchis conspicuously absent from both ranks. (Musa Khan and Kakar army chiefs in Ayub and NS time though hailing from Quetta were respectively ethnic Hazara and Pathan). They are put through a designed and deliberate metamorphosis; broken down, and built up again in the traditions of unquestioning obedience, and uniform reaction to any given set of circumstances. It is, of course a highly regimented body, where free thought is sedulously rooted out. Pakistan army is highly disciplined. All the successful coups have been from the above, with the Army chief at the helm. They obey the chief regardless of his ethnicity. The chief effectively sheds his ethnic culture. The armed forces are curiously enough a true reflection of the dominant society of the country.
Senior civil bureaucratic services of Pakistan are overwhelmingly of feudal derivation, with a little sprinkling of the progeny of urban bourgeoisie and a rare entrant from the other classes. (Professionals-Journalists, Doctors, Engineers, Accountants, Lawyers, Business graduates, Architects etc have a higher representation of the urban bourgeoisie than the other groups do).
Capitalists, not the ones metamorphosed from the feudals, have a quasi-national character. They are largely in service industries, dependent on and beholden to Global Corporations. Productive industries are very much in the nature of consumables like food, Cotton, Plastic, Rayon, Leather goods and china. Heavy industry is minimal. Industrial workers correspondingly lack substance. They are not cohesive, are heavily infiltrated by fifth columnists and are led by timeservers and easily controlled by the repressive machinery of the state.
A valid query would be that if the army, political leaders and bureaucrats all belong to the same class, why does the army suppress the politicians? The answer should not require the intelligence of a rocket scientist. Family feuds are much worse, and country cousins kill more frequently for share of the land, than urban ones do for money. Bloody feuds over Zar, Zan, Zameen (Money, Women and land, the traditional causes of friction) antedate industrial revolution. They decry each other for a greater share of the loot. Aslam Beg who took over as army chief after Zia died, went to the Supreme court and gave details of how he gave government funds to politicians during a non party election and furnished a list of the recipients. Asghar Khan prayed the court that the persons named be prosecuted. The Chief Justice wanted to take up the case. He was literally hounded out of the office by the gangsters of Nawaz. No government, civilian or military, has taken any except cosmetic steps to abolish the feudal system. Army has in fact become the largest industry, commercial and financial concern and the largest land and urban property owner (defense housing societies) in the country. Retired and active duty army officers serve as bureaucrats, deans, principals and vice-chancellors of educational institutions. For God's sake they even own tankers that supply water to Karachi homes! All they have to do is to appoint army Mullahs to mosques, madrassahs and shrines to complete the circle and become the evil Quad in one body. Symbiosis of the governing classes should be pretty obvious.
What recourse do the enlightened Pakistanis have?
The one advocated by civil libertarian-reformists would have us agitate, appeal to our over lords, encourage people in Pakistan to take out processions and if possible create law and order situation, and some how to force the Army to allow "free and fair" elections. Even if the concept of fair and free elections in Pakistan had any more validity than voting with a gun on their heads- remember the US line; if you do not vote against Sandinistas, we will make sure you will starve. In Pakistani context defying the feudal lord, Biradari, tribe and clan- even if the police and the bureaucrats were to abstain from bogus voting and stuffing ballots, not a likely scenario-the same bunch of nincompoops will return, who will only ask that their hands be allowed in the till too. We will simply be enlarging the number of guests at the feast of Jackals. They will be toothless jackals too. The army officers holding civilian jobs are not going back to barracks. Why should they? Remember it was a civilian Prime Minister Nawaz Shareef who handed over WAPDA to the Army. It was the civilian Prime Ministers father and daughter Bhutto who handed over law and order to the army. It was “democratic” ZAB, who by indiscriminately nationalizing all industry and commerce and handing them over to his cronies debilitated the nascent Capital and set it back for decades. That step alone revitalized feudalism . He imprisoned dissidents, curbed civil liberties and emasculated the press much more than any military dictator . Civilian power brokers will enrich themselves as they did under BB and Nawaz. They will pursue the same policies of privatizing everything at the behest of IMF and World Bank. They will let Global Capital control the very lives of the people, pushing cost of living so high that life would not be worth living. That appears to be the agenda of the International corporations.
We must not forget that except for the Ghazi of Kargil, all army chiefs were invited to take over by the civilians. Nawaz Sharif had an "overwhelming" mandate; over two third majority in the parliament. He had been successful in dislodging a Chief Justice, a Naval Chief and lo and behold even an army chief. But when push came to shove, no body raised a voice of protest when Musharraf sent him packing. No body went out on the streets. Most of his minions joined hands with the usurper. Benazir's PPP leaders, no doubt tired of political wilderness, also joined the ranks of collaborators .
Students are the most politically conscious section of Pakistani populace. They would not be taken in by the mentally challenged pansies masquerading as political leaders in Pakistan. They would not follow feckless cowards. The only problem with student led agitations is that they do not have the stamina for prolonged struggle. Radical left is littered with names of might have beens, Mantos, Sarwars, Hashmis, Kadris, Sher Afzals and Wadoods).
Pakistan's tragedy is that it never developed institutions. Every generation has to make its own mistakes and learn lesson anew. The left, dominated by communists, failed Pakistan with its internecine feuds. You could count them on fingers of two hands yet still broke into Russian/Chinese factions, were swept away like so much jetsam and flotsam and left progressives in the lurch. Politicians are so keen on regaining some measure of power, however unreal it may be that, that they are prepared to countenance, nay embrace Musharraf, if only he will take off his uniform. BB and NS only try to make sure that he will not smile at the other. This obsession with uniform can only be explained if we accept the contention that the politicos want only the semblance and not the reality of power. Benazir presents a precedent. She debased herself by begging for the blessing of General Aslam Beg, a collaborator of her father's murderer .
From the perspectives of expatriates all that a civilian Government would achieve would be that the hands of a relative of some and not the others will be on the till.
Should we opt for NGOs? Remember NGO's function as the covert arm of the Imperium, distracting attention from failure of the state to do its job. The edge of conflict is dulled. The march to revolution is slowed. The incentive to confront the jackals is diminished. But for the NGO band-aid people might rise in desperation. "Marta Na To Karta Kya" (roughly do or die).
We must not ignore the fact that most NGOs are funded by corporations. There is no free lunch. If you accept money, you follow the dicta. NGO's in South Asia are if any thing more beholden the US government the overt arm of Global Capital .
States have interests and not friends. Human rights are not even their medium high priority, even in their own country. Why would they put themselves out for Vani (barter of daughters), Gang Rape and honor killing in Pakistan? They condone even worse in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia. They will topple dictators only when the latter defy them, when they calculate that they can get away with it, over running Iraq, bombing Libya and Somalia, invading Granada and Panama, subverting Iran, Haiti, Honduras, Chile, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. They will only pay lip service to human rights when their strategic interests are not at stake; example North Korea. They will not even slap the wrists of tin pot dictators of client states. Banking on them is akin to living in a fool's paradise.
But we have to use the available instruments. We participated in Student union affairs, as it was the easily accessible vehicle at hand. While looking for a more dynamic way we should not discount the NGO path taking care that they do not hijack our agenda.
True and lasting social justice will be obtained through a political party of workers, the dispossessed and the politically aware intellectuals. Academic criticism of small groups of people over a period of time contributed significantly to mass and popular movements as happened in anti slavery, feminist and civil rights movements. We should do so with all the vigor at our command. Our rallies, protests and seminars might be worth it, if they resulted in heightened consciousness.
Let us, though, not forget that the movements were led by a vanguard with fire in their belly, and they were not funded by Governments. In any case no NGO has yet lighted the flame of an anti-establishment conflagration.
Does that leave us in a morass of ever deepening depression? Are south Asia, Mid East and Africa hopeless? Will Far East never emerge out of the slough of client statism? Will Palestinians be Red Indianised?
We live in a very small world and are no longer isolated. What ever affects one part of humanity has an impact on all of our species. The fate of Red Indians, indigenous people in New Zealand, Australia and the "primitive" tribes in Africa are, unfortunately, norms of history. Humans are believed to have dealt with near human Neanderthals in a similar manner. They became extinct. (Fascism is a throw back too. It tried to exterminate Jews. Zionists are ironically enough trying to follow suit.
But times have changed. There is hope. In the era of instant communications, the Imperium and its agents can not get away with what the Europeans, mainly the British, the pioneers of biological warfare, got away with, in the preceding several centuries. (In return for the hospitality, shelter and protection native Indians offered them, they gave their hosts blankets impregnated with small pox exudates. With no immunity, they died like flies). Poison gas was used by the British against the Iraqis post WWI. Churchill, in charge of the offensive openly declared that use of gas against inferior races was justifiable.
Palestinians and Bosnians have not been exterminated. They have, indeed, been transplanted, as the Jews did, to the West and give sustenance to the parent tree.
Historical process is on the side of the people of Pakistan. It and the rest of under developed world, is groaning under the burden of the Imperium and their toadies. They will progress from the current feudal/tribal, fascist dispensations to a Capitalist society. Democracy will follow. Remember, it took European capitalism several centuries to break the shackles of the Royalty-feudal combine; the latter actually helped the demise by fighting the former. Capitalism inevitably leads to exploitation of the workers. They will eventually rise, not with standing the insidious impact of reformers and half hearted social supports systems. Capitalists sense the impending conflict and throw crumbs; witness the welfarism in post depression USA, post WWII Europe and post civil rights reforms in the USA again. Social justice will inevitably prevail.
The problem with this scenario is that it will take a long time. An unfortunate aspect of attempts at short cuts is that they not been very successful. One was the late and not much lamented Soviet Union. But they did not faithfully follow their prophet. Marx envisioned a fully industrialized society with acute class conflict where workers will rise and annihilate the oppressors. Lenin and Trotsky and their cohorts did manage to wipe out the feudal-royal oppressors. But they did not have a substantial working class. Russia was any thing but industrialized. They had to, in the first place, overthrow the socialist Government, abolish all the socialist measures introduced by that Government and impose a dictatorship. The process was subverted by machinations of international capital, nearly annihilated by fascist onslaught It is a not true that socialism failed in the Soviet Union. It was never introduced there.
The other attempt at accelerating the historical process was Mao's revolution in China. China wan an agrarian society, ruled by feudal warlords engaged in incessant skirmishes. The country was in fiduciary bondage to imperial powers. Japanese aggression, take over by Chiang Kai Shek an under study of the colonizers and WWII, weakened the grip of the overlords. That gave Mao and his comrades a window of opportunity. They overcame the opposition. But they did not have an industrial base or workers either and had to impose a dictatorship as well. It had a more human face, though. Mao sent his opponents to farms rather than to gallows, as Stalin did.
The third rather more promising example is Cuba, which has so far been steadfast in a socialist path in spite of all the subversions and aggressions. It has inspired revolutionaries in Venezuela, Bolivia and many other countries.
A common thread that ran through all the "socialist" countries was that they overcame internal and external opposition, and made tremendous and fast headway in material progress. They were able to institute a welfare state, providing basic necessities, food, clothes, shelter, health care, education and jobs to all. That cannot be said of the richest and most developed countries. Capitalist democratic Russia had to withdraw all the social welfare supports. Capitalist countries were so frightened that third world countries would follow the development model of socialist countries that they poured aid into India to develop it as a showcase to rival China. This they did with obvious distaste, as they hated Nehru for his independent ways.
The current overwhelming trend at Globalization may be Marx's dream come true. In the last several centuries it has been the national capital, marauding the colonies and warring with each other for the spoils. All the European countries, not excluding even the lowly Portugal, boasted of vast territories in their possession. But the character of Capitalism is changing fast. Now a conglomeration of national capital is emerging. Like divine religions they do not recognize national boundaries. They do not even pay lip service to the concept of nationality. At one time they used to allow a "trickle" down to their own countrymen. They do not any more. The components of International Capital have always invested in all countries, Japanese in the USA, the USA in the UK and so on. Now they are taking over water, and other resources and the land all over the world. They have patents on crops and manufactories, and they own mineral rights everywhere. Client states are crushed under the burden of loans euphemistically called aid; they have to accept IMF and World Bank dicta-reduce subsidies, increase interest rates, take harsh austerity measures, augment foreign currency reserves and make the life of their citizens miserable. At the end of the day they force client governments to hand over control of natural resources. If any demur an explosion in the air, an insurgency, and if worse comes to the worst a coup will take care of them.
But what distinguishes Global Capitalism from national capitalism is that the former does not even pretend to be solicitous of the welfare of the people of the first world. The new mantra is out sourcing. They had to pay a living wage, health benefits, unemployment and pension to workers in the USA. General Motors paid an average of $28.00 an hour to its workers. They pay $4.00 an hour to a South American worker for doing the same job -with no fringe benefits. Delphi, a GM subsidiary would like its workers to accept $9.00 per hour instead of the current $27.00 per hour or lose their job. Welfare benefits do does not last long. Workers have to accept lower pay. Numerous other industries, airlines the foremost, have forced their workers to accept a drastic cut in their wages. Countless others have moved out of the country. Ninety percent of software industry is now in India. Shorn of the disguise of reduced wages and benefits, unemployment would be rampant in the USA. I lived in the UK in 2001-2002. The same situation obtains there. They have a smaller economy so their unemployment rate is much higher. All the European countries are busy whittling away at the social support system introduced after WWII. The recent riots in France, at the moment affecting only the immigrants, are portentous of worse to come.
My submission is that when the ordinary humans of the first world will become economically destitute, and will be reduced to the state of the third world, they will rise in solidarity with all the dispossessed. Only then would the long and tortuous historical process will be shortened. And Marx may turn out to be a true prophet after all.
They engineered alienation on religious grounds, so that what were friendly neighbors till yesterday, butchered each other today. The more sensitive ones wore a mask while torturing and raping. The devious ones invited their co-religionists to abduct, bash the heads of, and incinerate innocent children.
They were not a colonial creation. In fact they owe their origin to the Sufi trend in Islam, which emphasized love, tolerance and respect for all creeds, colors and races. The founders of the houses had invariably been men of great character and integrity had exercised overwhelming influence over the populace and were largely responsible for mass conversion of Indians to Islamic faith. They never claimed semi-divine status or a special relationship with God, but their devotees- Hindu and Muslim- attributed miracles to them- exercise their power in a more sinister way. Their serfs are not only in physical thrall; they are in spiritual bondage as well. They send their progeny to universities, but education does not persuade them to shed their semi-divine status. They have a captive constituency, which they unabashedly use to advance their political ambitions. They will use any means to keep their land holdings in the family, and that includes marrying their daughters and sisters to the Quran. In the national assembly they will vote to repeal laws discriminatory to women. “Progressive” parties have to cater to their inbuilt clout
3 They had opposed creation of Pakistan on the spurious argument that all Muslims belong to one nation called the Ummah. Mullahs who had the courage of their conviction stayed back in India. Maulana Maududi founder of the most coherent Islamic party the Jamaat e Islami had been in the forefront of opposition to Pakistan. He migrated to Pakistan, but to be fair to him he never allowed the party to participate in electoral politics deeming the system un-Islamic. After his death the party fell in the hands of “ pragmatists” who wheel and deal like all politicians whose sole aim is to gain power.
Capitalism is sine qua non for democracy. A glance at the conflict between feudal and capitalist interests of the UK since the industrial revolution will suffice. Capital wanted democracy to abolish the hereditary privileges and power of aristocracy. Thanks to the clergy industrial workers were beholden to them and would vote for their nominees who would pass laws against the entrenched feudal interest.
(Fascists like Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam and ZAB have historically been way more effective than military dictators. They have the support of the dominant section of civil society. How they go about obtaining it is a separate discussion.)
I am not prepared to accept that the politicians were helpless. I am not prepared to accept the argument that people are afraid of guns. We confronted Ayub's martial law in 1961, when the army had not yet been castrated by the 1971 civil war and people still had a modicum of respect for the institution. Students, supported by the people again went out on the streets in 1968 and shook the foundations of the army rule. When Ayub hounded ZAB out of Pakistan it was students who sustained him. He was living in self imposed exile in England making the rounds of pubs-I met him in one-lamenting to any one who would listen, how Ayub had victimized him, how he had fought for the gains the army had made in 1965, how Ayub had betrayed the country etc. We held his hand and offered him our unstinted support in Pakistan.
I will risk repetition. Contrast this with Mujib's daughter putting her father's army murderess on trial. During a security meeting a Lt General snubbed her. I read this new item myself. No body denied it).
There is a very good study by Lars Schoultz, a highly regarded social scientist from the U of North Carolina. He has studied the relationship of US aid Vis a viv violations of Human Rights. He contends that the more egregious the violations, the higher the US aid. He has analyzed Latin American countries, but it applies equally well to South Asian recipients of US aid. It is not that Violation of Human Rights is a pre-condition set by aid managers. It is that the rulers get empowered and get away with murder-literally. Zia could not have promulgated all the barbaric ordnances if Soviet intervention in Afghanistan had not opened the floodgates of US aid. For all his affliction with "foot in the mouth disease" (he declared in a public meeting in NY city that women in Pakistan line up to get raped in order to get a Canadian/American visa) Musharraf was lauded by all the functionaries of the USA; Bush down).
There is a theory in evolution. There is, at times, a throw back to remote ancestors. Some current powerful politicians would seem to substantiate the idea).
S.Ehtisham
PO Box 469
Bath NY 14810
Phone 607077603336
S.Ehtisham
Role of Global capital
Enlightened Pakistani expatriates in the USA have developed a consensus that the genesis of what ails Pakistan can be traced to the feudal system our former colonial masters imposed on India The class remained true to their “creators”. They continued to throw crumbs to the landowners till the very end of their rule. The colonizers declared them and their vassals martial race, and used them against their own countrymen for sabotage of the national movement. They also used them to fight the inter-imperial wars all over the world.
The feudal lords treated their peasants worse than one would a slave, forcing them to work in their homes with out any payment, treating the latter’s females as keeps. In the tribal regions the chief used his “seigniorial” right to spend the first night with any bride that took his fancy. The tillers of the land did the owners bidding and when Indians won a semblance of representative governments, the former served as a vote bank .
The inherent weakness of the political party of the Muslims was that, with a few honorable exceptions, the progeny of the same bunch of “traitors” led it.
A special class of feudals is worthy of note. These are hereditary Pirs .
Muslims were historically handicapped as well. They had governed India for a millennium before they had lost power to the British. They had wielded the sword, given orders and framed laws. (Lately they had given up on that too, living a hedonistic life and carrying on the momentum generated over centuries) All trade, commerce, finance and administration had been left to Hindu business class. The latter had honed their political skills and were ready to offer services to the new rulers. That was their ticket to continued prosperity. The British having wrested power from Muslims naturally discriminated against them and patronized the Hindus. After 1857 Muslims were not just discriminated against; they were actively victimized. They might have been red-Indianised but for their large numbers and a few souls who were able to analyze the situation critically and came to the rational conclusion that the only escape for them was through education and collaboration with the rulers. If the choice is between living on reservations and working for your victor, few will opt for the former.
The reformists did not simply intend to create a collaborationist class. They meant to bide their time, regain vitality and overthrow the Raj when the time was ripe. A lot of nationalist Muslims fought shoulder to shoulder with their Hindu compatriots against the British. Their ranks included a brilliant young lawyer- MA Jinnah. The Raj was not content sitting on its hands either, and developed a corp. of fifth columnists, prominent among them the feudal lords and civil servants. When the colonizers could no longer with stand the assault of independence movement, they started favoring the Muslims. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, knew this and tried his best to avoid partition of the country. He held on to the concept of a Con-Federal structure with full autonomy to the constituent units. The only subjects the center would control would be defense, foreign affairs, and communications, with further safe guards such that the majority could not take a critical decision with out concurrence of the majority of the minority members of the central assembly. He could not accept a federal structure because he knew that in addition to an adverse 3:1 ratio in population, he was burdened with the onus of leading a mass of weak reeds.
But even Jinnah, past master though he was of tactics and adept at utilizing the mistakes of opponents to his advantage, could not over come the combine of British chicanery, the alienation caused by Gandhi introducing Hindu imagery and the illusion of Ram Raj into politics, overweening ambition of Nehru, the shortsightedness and low self image of Indian National congress leaders who would not accept a weak center. In spite of the support of the viceroy, Patel and Nehru had not been able to get the better of Liaquat and his cohorts in the interim cabinet. Jinnah had out maneuvered them at every stage and they were frightened out of their wits of the possibility of the latter joining the cabinet in independent India. They were, in any case confidant or had deluded themselves into believing that Pakistan would collapse and fall in their lap as an over ripe apple. A few days after independence Patel made a speech that it was a matter of weeks or at the most a few months, the country will collapse and we will take them back on our terms and not Jinnah’s. Jinnah had to accept " a moth eaten Pakistan", moth eaten to enervate it and sow the seeds of perpetual dissension between the two newly independent countries with no experience of self government- all to the specifications of Imperial design. That led the two nations at each other's throat, whose priority should have been development of social services, jobs, industry and education.
There are credible reasons to believe that Jinnah did not envisage a permanent state of alienation between the two countries. He willed most of his assets to charitable institutions in India. He did not even sell his house in Bombay, now valued at twenty million US dollars.
India inherited the machinery of established Government, a fairly advanced infra structure, a vibrant entrepreneur'ial class, a much larger and developed economic base, and a truly bourgeois national movement and could cope much better with the dislocation and trauma of partition. Pakistan on the contrary was bereft of developed resources, administrative machinery or industry. It had a much smaller and little developed economic base. Its political party was feudal in character, not with standing Jinnah and a few Bombay and Bengali lawyers. Jinnah tried his best, openly declared that the country would not discriminate on the basis of caste or creed. He ordained separation of religion and state. But that was not to be. He died and his successors put him on a pedestal and expediently forgot his instructions.
The obscurantist Mullahs (in country and those who migrated from India), till yesterday vehement opponents of Pakistan (rank opportunists that they were, climbed on the bandwagon, and as the proverbial jackals started feeding on the trough. They also potentiated the feudal class and pronounced fatwas (religious edicts) against reforms such as civil rights, equal status for women etc. Their main thrust was, however, against land reforms, the domain of their benefactors. In 1991 A Maulana Taqi Usmani upholding the sanctity of private property in Islam declared ZAB’s land reforms repugnant to the teachings of the religion. In neighboring Afghanistan PDPA government tried to introduce land reforms but were unable to over come tribal and feudal opposition. The country led to believe that Soviet Union will inevitably support India and in the deluded vision that the West would balance any aid proffered to their rival and to offset the latter’s greater might, willingly fell into the fatal embrace of Neo-Imperialists. . (The slogan of Pakistan and Islam is in danger hamstrung the would be nationalists). India abolished the feudal system in 1948. The Eastern Wing of Pakistan abolished the system too about the same time India did, as most of the feudals there were Hindus. Feudal system still survives and thrives in what was then West Pakistan-now all of Pakistan
This should, hopefully define with sufficient clarity, the reason India and Pakistan took different paths, why army has ruled Pakistan for most of its existence and why the Indian army sharing the same British heritage has been subservient to the civilian authority.
Pakistanis in the country and expatriates differ on the emphasis they should lay on the various sections of the society for perpetuation of the core evils of violation of civil rights, subjugation of women and their status as commodity to be bartered for land or in exchange for blood money, weddings to the Quran, Honor killing, corruption, poverty, illiteracy, paucity of social services. Seventy five percent of the national budget is spent on debt servicing and armed forces, with less spent on health, education and job creation than by even the poorest of the third world countries. Correct attribution of the proportion of blame to the components of the evil Quad is of prime importance as adoption of a line of action is dependent on critical analysis. Just complaining about all the barbaric acts of the "democratically" approved Punchayat ordained rapes and murders, police, army, bureaucratic complicity in the crimes and the supine judiciary, corrupt political parties would not help much. Protest from the safe grounds of the USA will not have much impact either.
Let us take up the army first. Do we impute an independent class character to it? Army personnel are derived from all classes of the society though predominantly from a feudal/peasant base yet recruitment from urban bourgeoisie, bureaucrats classes especially in the officer corp. is significant. Progeny of lower middle class traders, clerks, teachers and such officials aspire to an armed forces commission. There may be an odd one in the lower ranks from the laborers/industrial workers, peons etc. Pathans and Punjabis supply most of the non-commissioned ranks with Sindhis and Baluchis conspicuously absent from both ranks. (Musa Khan and Kakar army chiefs in Ayub and NS time though hailing from Quetta were respectively ethnic Hazara and Pathan). They are put through a designed and deliberate metamorphosis; broken down, and built up again in the traditions of unquestioning obedience, and uniform reaction to any given set of circumstances. It is, of course a highly regimented body, where free thought is sedulously rooted out. Pakistan army is highly disciplined. All the successful coups have been from the above, with the Army chief at the helm. They obey the chief regardless of his ethnicity. The chief effectively sheds his ethnic culture. The armed forces are curiously enough a true reflection of the dominant society of the country.
Senior civil bureaucratic services of Pakistan are overwhelmingly of feudal derivation, with a little sprinkling of the progeny of urban bourgeoisie and a rare entrant from the other classes. (Professionals-Journalists, Doctors, Engineers, Accountants, Lawyers, Business graduates, Architects etc have a higher representation of the urban bourgeoisie than the other groups do).
Capitalists, not the ones metamorphosed from the feudals, have a quasi-national character. They are largely in service industries, dependent on and beholden to Global Corporations. Productive industries are very much in the nature of consumables like food, Cotton, Plastic, Rayon, Leather goods and china. Heavy industry is minimal. Industrial workers correspondingly lack substance. They are not cohesive, are heavily infiltrated by fifth columnists and are led by timeservers and easily controlled by the repressive machinery of the state.
A valid query would be that if the army, political leaders and bureaucrats all belong to the same class, why does the army suppress the politicians? The answer should not require the intelligence of a rocket scientist. Family feuds are much worse, and country cousins kill more frequently for share of the land, than urban ones do for money. Bloody feuds over Zar, Zan, Zameen (Money, Women and land, the traditional causes of friction) antedate industrial revolution. They decry each other for a greater share of the loot. Aslam Beg who took over as army chief after Zia died, went to the Supreme court and gave details of how he gave government funds to politicians during a non party election and furnished a list of the recipients. Asghar Khan prayed the court that the persons named be prosecuted. The Chief Justice wanted to take up the case. He was literally hounded out of the office by the gangsters of Nawaz. No government, civilian or military, has taken any except cosmetic steps to abolish the feudal system. Army has in fact become the largest industry, commercial and financial concern and the largest land and urban property owner (defense housing societies) in the country. Retired and active duty army officers serve as bureaucrats, deans, principals and vice-chancellors of educational institutions. For God's sake they even own tankers that supply water to Karachi homes! All they have to do is to appoint army Mullahs to mosques, madrassahs and shrines to complete the circle and become the evil Quad in one body. Symbiosis of the governing classes should be pretty obvious.
What recourse do the enlightened Pakistanis have?
The one advocated by civil libertarian-reformists would have us agitate, appeal to our over lords, encourage people in Pakistan to take out processions and if possible create law and order situation, and some how to force the Army to allow "free and fair" elections. Even if the concept of fair and free elections in Pakistan had any more validity than voting with a gun on their heads- remember the US line; if you do not vote against Sandinistas, we will make sure you will starve. In Pakistani context defying the feudal lord, Biradari, tribe and clan- even if the police and the bureaucrats were to abstain from bogus voting and stuffing ballots, not a likely scenario-the same bunch of nincompoops will return, who will only ask that their hands be allowed in the till too. We will simply be enlarging the number of guests at the feast of Jackals. They will be toothless jackals too. The army officers holding civilian jobs are not going back to barracks. Why should they? Remember it was a civilian Prime Minister Nawaz Shareef who handed over WAPDA to the Army. It was the civilian Prime Ministers father and daughter Bhutto who handed over law and order to the army. It was “democratic” ZAB, who by indiscriminately nationalizing all industry and commerce and handing them over to his cronies debilitated the nascent Capital and set it back for decades. That step alone revitalized feudalism . He imprisoned dissidents, curbed civil liberties and emasculated the press much more than any military dictator . Civilian power brokers will enrich themselves as they did under BB and Nawaz. They will pursue the same policies of privatizing everything at the behest of IMF and World Bank. They will let Global Capital control the very lives of the people, pushing cost of living so high that life would not be worth living. That appears to be the agenda of the International corporations.
We must not forget that except for the Ghazi of Kargil, all army chiefs were invited to take over by the civilians. Nawaz Sharif had an "overwhelming" mandate; over two third majority in the parliament. He had been successful in dislodging a Chief Justice, a Naval Chief and lo and behold even an army chief. But when push came to shove, no body raised a voice of protest when Musharraf sent him packing. No body went out on the streets. Most of his minions joined hands with the usurper. Benazir's PPP leaders, no doubt tired of political wilderness, also joined the ranks of collaborators .
Students are the most politically conscious section of Pakistani populace. They would not be taken in by the mentally challenged pansies masquerading as political leaders in Pakistan. They would not follow feckless cowards. The only problem with student led agitations is that they do not have the stamina for prolonged struggle. Radical left is littered with names of might have beens, Mantos, Sarwars, Hashmis, Kadris, Sher Afzals and Wadoods).
Pakistan's tragedy is that it never developed institutions. Every generation has to make its own mistakes and learn lesson anew. The left, dominated by communists, failed Pakistan with its internecine feuds. You could count them on fingers of two hands yet still broke into Russian/Chinese factions, were swept away like so much jetsam and flotsam and left progressives in the lurch. Politicians are so keen on regaining some measure of power, however unreal it may be that, that they are prepared to countenance, nay embrace Musharraf, if only he will take off his uniform. BB and NS only try to make sure that he will not smile at the other. This obsession with uniform can only be explained if we accept the contention that the politicos want only the semblance and not the reality of power. Benazir presents a precedent. She debased herself by begging for the blessing of General Aslam Beg, a collaborator of her father's murderer .
From the perspectives of expatriates all that a civilian Government would achieve would be that the hands of a relative of some and not the others will be on the till.
Should we opt for NGOs? Remember NGO's function as the covert arm of the Imperium, distracting attention from failure of the state to do its job. The edge of conflict is dulled. The march to revolution is slowed. The incentive to confront the jackals is diminished. But for the NGO band-aid people might rise in desperation. "Marta Na To Karta Kya" (roughly do or die).
We must not ignore the fact that most NGOs are funded by corporations. There is no free lunch. If you accept money, you follow the dicta. NGO's in South Asia are if any thing more beholden the US government the overt arm of Global Capital .
States have interests and not friends. Human rights are not even their medium high priority, even in their own country. Why would they put themselves out for Vani (barter of daughters), Gang Rape and honor killing in Pakistan? They condone even worse in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia. They will topple dictators only when the latter defy them, when they calculate that they can get away with it, over running Iraq, bombing Libya and Somalia, invading Granada and Panama, subverting Iran, Haiti, Honduras, Chile, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. They will only pay lip service to human rights when their strategic interests are not at stake; example North Korea. They will not even slap the wrists of tin pot dictators of client states. Banking on them is akin to living in a fool's paradise.
But we have to use the available instruments. We participated in Student union affairs, as it was the easily accessible vehicle at hand. While looking for a more dynamic way we should not discount the NGO path taking care that they do not hijack our agenda.
True and lasting social justice will be obtained through a political party of workers, the dispossessed and the politically aware intellectuals. Academic criticism of small groups of people over a period of time contributed significantly to mass and popular movements as happened in anti slavery, feminist and civil rights movements. We should do so with all the vigor at our command. Our rallies, protests and seminars might be worth it, if they resulted in heightened consciousness.
Let us, though, not forget that the movements were led by a vanguard with fire in their belly, and they were not funded by Governments. In any case no NGO has yet lighted the flame of an anti-establishment conflagration.
Does that leave us in a morass of ever deepening depression? Are south Asia, Mid East and Africa hopeless? Will Far East never emerge out of the slough of client statism? Will Palestinians be Red Indianised?
We live in a very small world and are no longer isolated. What ever affects one part of humanity has an impact on all of our species. The fate of Red Indians, indigenous people in New Zealand, Australia and the "primitive" tribes in Africa are, unfortunately, norms of history. Humans are believed to have dealt with near human Neanderthals in a similar manner. They became extinct. (Fascism is a throw back too. It tried to exterminate Jews. Zionists are ironically enough trying to follow suit.
But times have changed. There is hope. In the era of instant communications, the Imperium and its agents can not get away with what the Europeans, mainly the British, the pioneers of biological warfare, got away with, in the preceding several centuries. (In return for the hospitality, shelter and protection native Indians offered them, they gave their hosts blankets impregnated with small pox exudates. With no immunity, they died like flies). Poison gas was used by the British against the Iraqis post WWI. Churchill, in charge of the offensive openly declared that use of gas against inferior races was justifiable.
Palestinians and Bosnians have not been exterminated. They have, indeed, been transplanted, as the Jews did, to the West and give sustenance to the parent tree.
Historical process is on the side of the people of Pakistan. It and the rest of under developed world, is groaning under the burden of the Imperium and their toadies. They will progress from the current feudal/tribal, fascist dispensations to a Capitalist society. Democracy will follow. Remember, it took European capitalism several centuries to break the shackles of the Royalty-feudal combine; the latter actually helped the demise by fighting the former. Capitalism inevitably leads to exploitation of the workers. They will eventually rise, not with standing the insidious impact of reformers and half hearted social supports systems. Capitalists sense the impending conflict and throw crumbs; witness the welfarism in post depression USA, post WWII Europe and post civil rights reforms in the USA again. Social justice will inevitably prevail.
The problem with this scenario is that it will take a long time. An unfortunate aspect of attempts at short cuts is that they not been very successful. One was the late and not much lamented Soviet Union. But they did not faithfully follow their prophet. Marx envisioned a fully industrialized society with acute class conflict where workers will rise and annihilate the oppressors. Lenin and Trotsky and their cohorts did manage to wipe out the feudal-royal oppressors. But they did not have a substantial working class. Russia was any thing but industrialized. They had to, in the first place, overthrow the socialist Government, abolish all the socialist measures introduced by that Government and impose a dictatorship. The process was subverted by machinations of international capital, nearly annihilated by fascist onslaught It is a not true that socialism failed in the Soviet Union. It was never introduced there.
The other attempt at accelerating the historical process was Mao's revolution in China. China wan an agrarian society, ruled by feudal warlords engaged in incessant skirmishes. The country was in fiduciary bondage to imperial powers. Japanese aggression, take over by Chiang Kai Shek an under study of the colonizers and WWII, weakened the grip of the overlords. That gave Mao and his comrades a window of opportunity. They overcame the opposition. But they did not have an industrial base or workers either and had to impose a dictatorship as well. It had a more human face, though. Mao sent his opponents to farms rather than to gallows, as Stalin did.
The third rather more promising example is Cuba, which has so far been steadfast in a socialist path in spite of all the subversions and aggressions. It has inspired revolutionaries in Venezuela, Bolivia and many other countries.
A common thread that ran through all the "socialist" countries was that they overcame internal and external opposition, and made tremendous and fast headway in material progress. They were able to institute a welfare state, providing basic necessities, food, clothes, shelter, health care, education and jobs to all. That cannot be said of the richest and most developed countries. Capitalist democratic Russia had to withdraw all the social welfare supports. Capitalist countries were so frightened that third world countries would follow the development model of socialist countries that they poured aid into India to develop it as a showcase to rival China. This they did with obvious distaste, as they hated Nehru for his independent ways.
The current overwhelming trend at Globalization may be Marx's dream come true. In the last several centuries it has been the national capital, marauding the colonies and warring with each other for the spoils. All the European countries, not excluding even the lowly Portugal, boasted of vast territories in their possession. But the character of Capitalism is changing fast. Now a conglomeration of national capital is emerging. Like divine religions they do not recognize national boundaries. They do not even pay lip service to the concept of nationality. At one time they used to allow a "trickle" down to their own countrymen. They do not any more. The components of International Capital have always invested in all countries, Japanese in the USA, the USA in the UK and so on. Now they are taking over water, and other resources and the land all over the world. They have patents on crops and manufactories, and they own mineral rights everywhere. Client states are crushed under the burden of loans euphemistically called aid; they have to accept IMF and World Bank dicta-reduce subsidies, increase interest rates, take harsh austerity measures, augment foreign currency reserves and make the life of their citizens miserable. At the end of the day they force client governments to hand over control of natural resources. If any demur an explosion in the air, an insurgency, and if worse comes to the worst a coup will take care of them.
But what distinguishes Global Capitalism from national capitalism is that the former does not even pretend to be solicitous of the welfare of the people of the first world. The new mantra is out sourcing. They had to pay a living wage, health benefits, unemployment and pension to workers in the USA. General Motors paid an average of $28.00 an hour to its workers. They pay $4.00 an hour to a South American worker for doing the same job -with no fringe benefits. Delphi, a GM subsidiary would like its workers to accept $9.00 per hour instead of the current $27.00 per hour or lose their job. Welfare benefits do does not last long. Workers have to accept lower pay. Numerous other industries, airlines the foremost, have forced their workers to accept a drastic cut in their wages. Countless others have moved out of the country. Ninety percent of software industry is now in India. Shorn of the disguise of reduced wages and benefits, unemployment would be rampant in the USA. I lived in the UK in 2001-2002. The same situation obtains there. They have a smaller economy so their unemployment rate is much higher. All the European countries are busy whittling away at the social support system introduced after WWII. The recent riots in France, at the moment affecting only the immigrants, are portentous of worse to come.
My submission is that when the ordinary humans of the first world will become economically destitute, and will be reduced to the state of the third world, they will rise in solidarity with all the dispossessed. Only then would the long and tortuous historical process will be shortened. And Marx may turn out to be a true prophet after all.
They engineered alienation on religious grounds, so that what were friendly neighbors till yesterday, butchered each other today. The more sensitive ones wore a mask while torturing and raping. The devious ones invited their co-religionists to abduct, bash the heads of, and incinerate innocent children.
They were not a colonial creation. In fact they owe their origin to the Sufi trend in Islam, which emphasized love, tolerance and respect for all creeds, colors and races. The founders of the houses had invariably been men of great character and integrity had exercised overwhelming influence over the populace and were largely responsible for mass conversion of Indians to Islamic faith. They never claimed semi-divine status or a special relationship with God, but their devotees- Hindu and Muslim- attributed miracles to them- exercise their power in a more sinister way. Their serfs are not only in physical thrall; they are in spiritual bondage as well. They send their progeny to universities, but education does not persuade them to shed their semi-divine status. They have a captive constituency, which they unabashedly use to advance their political ambitions. They will use any means to keep their land holdings in the family, and that includes marrying their daughters and sisters to the Quran. In the national assembly they will vote to repeal laws discriminatory to women. “Progressive” parties have to cater to their inbuilt clout
3 They had opposed creation of Pakistan on the spurious argument that all Muslims belong to one nation called the Ummah. Mullahs who had the courage of their conviction stayed back in India. Maulana Maududi founder of the most coherent Islamic party the Jamaat e Islami had been in the forefront of opposition to Pakistan. He migrated to Pakistan, but to be fair to him he never allowed the party to participate in electoral politics deeming the system un-Islamic. After his death the party fell in the hands of “ pragmatists” who wheel and deal like all politicians whose sole aim is to gain power.
Capitalism is sine qua non for democracy. A glance at the conflict between feudal and capitalist interests of the UK since the industrial revolution will suffice. Capital wanted democracy to abolish the hereditary privileges and power of aristocracy. Thanks to the clergy industrial workers were beholden to them and would vote for their nominees who would pass laws against the entrenched feudal interest.
(Fascists like Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam and ZAB have historically been way more effective than military dictators. They have the support of the dominant section of civil society. How they go about obtaining it is a separate discussion.)
I am not prepared to accept that the politicians were helpless. I am not prepared to accept the argument that people are afraid of guns. We confronted Ayub's martial law in 1961, when the army had not yet been castrated by the 1971 civil war and people still had a modicum of respect for the institution. Students, supported by the people again went out on the streets in 1968 and shook the foundations of the army rule. When Ayub hounded ZAB out of Pakistan it was students who sustained him. He was living in self imposed exile in England making the rounds of pubs-I met him in one-lamenting to any one who would listen, how Ayub had victimized him, how he had fought for the gains the army had made in 1965, how Ayub had betrayed the country etc. We held his hand and offered him our unstinted support in Pakistan.
I will risk repetition. Contrast this with Mujib's daughter putting her father's army murderess on trial. During a security meeting a Lt General snubbed her. I read this new item myself. No body denied it).
There is a very good study by Lars Schoultz, a highly regarded social scientist from the U of North Carolina. He has studied the relationship of US aid Vis a viv violations of Human Rights. He contends that the more egregious the violations, the higher the US aid. He has analyzed Latin American countries, but it applies equally well to South Asian recipients of US aid. It is not that Violation of Human Rights is a pre-condition set by aid managers. It is that the rulers get empowered and get away with murder-literally. Zia could not have promulgated all the barbaric ordnances if Soviet intervention in Afghanistan had not opened the floodgates of US aid. For all his affliction with "foot in the mouth disease" (he declared in a public meeting in NY city that women in Pakistan line up to get raped in order to get a Canadian/American visa) Musharraf was lauded by all the functionaries of the USA; Bush down).
There is a theory in evolution. There is, at times, a throw back to remote ancestors. Some current powerful politicians would seem to substantiate the idea).
S.Ehtisham
PO Box 469
Bath NY 14810
Phone 607077603336
S.Ehtisham
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