India Retold

How often do we hear that Muslims are being discriminated against, and that it is this that has led to their extreme poverty and backwardness? This seductive argument has been used, once again, by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH) to ask for reservations for Muslims in accordance with their proportion of the population. If the JUH is to be believed, persistent discrimination against Muslims in official, semi-official and representative institutions has been going on for 62 years, and that is why their representation in various spheres is less than 2%, despite 'India's second largest community' constituting 13% of India's population. This view was reiterated in the resolution adopted by the JUH in its 30th General Session held at Deoband recently.

There is little doubt that there have been, and are, many walls, big and small, between people belonging to various religions, communities, castes, sub-castes, creeds etc. There is also little doubt that many of these have either broken down completely or been reduced to a height that allows reasonably friction-free social interaction and engagement. That has happened primarily because India chose to be a secular state and pushed in many reforms that kept religion firmly away from the affairs of the state. The practical realisation of individuals that they need to adapt to rapid changes taking place all around them if they want to survive and get ahead have also helped in breaking barriers fairly rapidly in some parts of the country. In the midst of all this, there continue to be pockets of stiff resistance that feel threatened and insecure by the sheer sweep and speed of change that is leaving no one untouched.

Are we to believe that Muslims have fallen behind only because they are "oppressed and deprived" like Dalits, as the JUH wants the nation and Muslims to believe? Or is there more to it? No one can deny that the violent creation of Pakistan has left a scar and makes some non-Muslims unfairly view some Indian Muslims with a degree of suspicion. But for anyone to say that Muslims have got marginalised because they have been oppressed for 62 years is neither fair nor justified.

But, as always, the JUH has blamed the government, indeed all us who are non-Muslims, squarely for the failure of Muslims to march in step with other Indians. Has it tried to find out where Muslims might have gone wrong and what steps they really need to take to change their deteriorating relative position? Sure it has, but not in the manner you would expect.

In fact, the prescriptions that the JUH has prepared for Indian Muslims are designed to only push them further into a downward spiral and isolate them even more from not only the secular Indian state but also their non-Muslim neighbours living across the road.

The JUH resolution says that while "degeneration in the Indian society" has affected every community, "Muslims, in particular, have been targets of various cultural malpractices". There is, of course, no mention of who exactly is so targetting Muslims specifically and for what purpose. The JUH also believes that Muslims are being tempted towards western culture. "This has created crisis of Islamic identity. These evils have to be fought against vigorously". And how are Muslims expected to fight it? "Practice salaam, don their Islamic identity...avoid watching cinema, television and other moral killing things". Condoms have been implicitly banned too.

Can you spot the difference in what the JUH is saying and what the Taliban have put in place in large parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the explosive results thereof? Now if Indian Muslims are also being asked to look no further than their Islamic identity, as defined by the JUH, and isolate themselves in an impenetrable bubble even though they are living in a secular state, while continuing to preach unilateral secularism to non-Muslims, where are things going to head?

There is more. Despite making the charge that Muslims are discriminated against, the JUH resolution admits the harsh fact that Muslims are highly backward in the realm of modern education and that this is the main cause of their socio-economic backwardness. This is actually the where the real problem lies; the talk of "oppression" is designed to keep Muslims isolated and under tight control of the ulema more than anything else. The resolution even goes to the extent of acknowledging that a "section of Muslims who get admission in the government and semi-government common institutions of modern courses, get isolated". Why do they get isolated? And what must be done to end that isolation? Most will immediately agree that this can be done primarily by increasing social interaction between Muslims and others, and that this must begin right from the nursery school stage itself.

But, the JUH does not see it that way at all. In fact it wants to do exactly the opposite, and isolate Muslims even more. It wants Muslims to establish primary, secondary, higher secondary schools and colleges, and professional and technical institutions, and to make arrangements in them to provide education about religious studies "under Islamic atmosphere". What about girls? They should study in non-residential schools with a special syllabus that should be completed in six years. "On completion of 10 years of age, complete shariat norms should be observed while continuing their education". The JUH also wants the government to establish an independent central board of education, like the CBSE, governed by a body of Muslim scholars and educationalists, where Muslim schools and educational institutes can get easy affiliation. In these schools, modern education will be provided to "Muslim children in Islamic atmosphere".

In short, the JUH wants that Indian Muslims must shun everything that defines a secular state and an inclusive society. They must remain confined to themselves at home and in schools and colleges, and be known by their defined-by-JUH "Islamic identity" alone.

As far as the JUH is concerned, therefore, the sole role of a secular Indian state is to permit Muslims to see themselves only from a narrow religious prism and, at the same time, give them representation in all secular institutions of the state in proportion to their population.

Is that possible? If the JUH feels that some Muslims feel isolated in common institutes of modern education because of their upbringing based solely on a religious identity, how are they ever going to feel at home after years of an exclusively 'Islamic' atmosphere in homes and schools and colleges? What about Muslim women? If they are to be brought up strictly as per Shariat norms, how are they ever going to pick up jobs in secular institutions or be comfortable as wives in such social environments where their husbands are employed? And if both men and women remain aloof and isolated there too, is it not going to strengthen prejudices and actually increase social friction and reinforce stereotypes?

This raises a logical question: Who is actually 'oppressing' Muslims and preventing them from moving ahead like fellow Indians of other religions? Is it the secular Indian state and non-Muslims, or Muslim organisations like the JUH that want to mentally and physically ghettoise Muslims to retain control over them, and then cry discrimination?

Clearly, even the events in Pakistan and Afghanistan have not made the JUH realise that in this vastly changed world, Muslims cannot afford to remain frozen in time and still expect to progress like the rest of the world. That is perhaps one reason why even Jinnah visualised Pakistan as a secular state. During medieval times, the whole world was almost at the same technological level. At that time, rigid religious identity and missionary zeal, coupled with the element of surprise, acted as force multipliers that altered the balance of power and achieved dramatic results. Today, with the rest of the world having powered far ahead in education, technology, material comforts, individual and religious freedom, and hard power - and speeding further away - the same tools cannot work, if one takes a macro, civilisational view. They can only have the long term effect of further marginalising and impoverishing Muslims who remain stuck in that mindset.

It is time secular, liberal and progressive Indian Muslims raised their voice against attempts by organisations like the JUH to push Indians Muslims further into seclusion and resultant backwardness. Javed Akhtar and Salman Khursheed have already shown the way, questioning the JUH resolution banning the singing of Vande Mataram, by highlighting that the JUH is needlessly raking up an issue that had been settled 50 years back, a decision to which the JUH was a party. Aamir Raza Hussain has also done so. Many more such voices need to be raised. For India, for its Muslim citizens and for the society at large.

Long before many of us were born, there lived a man in India who raised his voice against exploitation of India's resources and its citizens by the state that was then run by a colonial power. This man, despite being born into wealth and privilege, and educated in the land of the exploiting kingdom, chose to fight for his countrymen to free them from that oppressive yoke.

Like many before him, he too could have wined and dined in Delhi and Bombay, written fine articles in the language of the master whose ways he had adopted, and filled himself and the oppressed with hatred, to incite them, from the comfort of his home or wherever, to wage war against the 'state' by picking up a gun, or the bows and arrows that they had been using since 'long before there was a country called India'.

But, no, he did something else altogether. He shed almost everything that represented the repression he was fighting against, and took to living the life of the poor people he wanted to awaken and help. Without hatred or violence, that man in a loin cloth electrified India and overthrew the greatest empire on earth.

63 years after Independence, the state run by its own people remains the oppressor and exploiter in the eyes of over 800 million Indians for whom freedom and democracy are words that still have no meaning whatsoever. They remain poor, uneducated, hungry and as developed as they were hundreds, even thousands of years ago. And now, their land is under threat too, ready to be taken over by large corporations ready to extract bauxite, iron ore and much more, to feed the needs of an India that is growing and developing rapidly, unconcerned that a large part of it is still stationary and therefore moving farther away.

Many tribals, failing to find a real leader who can lead them into light, have fallen prey to a few who have made them believe that like Mao, they too will free them from the yoke of a state that has done nothing for them, a state that cannot be distinguished from the colonial regime that preceded it, a state that suppresses them using the same tools of governance that it found demeaning when their reins were in white hands.

Those few - call them Maoists, Leninists, Naxals, whatever - left a viciously violent legacy, wherever they held sway, be it the Soviet Union, China or Kampuchea. In the last century, they murdered close to 110 million people, many more than the 38 million who were killed in all the wars of the century put together. That is what they will do in India too, should they get power in the name of the people whose cause they are championing. What they did recently in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere in India should have left no one in any doubt that this path has the same ending, no matter where it is followed.

Enter a new breed of educated 'liberators' of India's downtrodden tribals, most ensconced comfortably in 21st century enclaves in cities, and loving it. They are the unlikely defenders and champions of Maoists, and are not willing to open their eyes to any but their anachronistic notions of a solution based on a discredited, violent ideology that they watch and cheer from a safe distance.

One of the most prominent of these romantics, for want of a better word, is a celebrated author armed with the Booker and, as Sagarika Ghose puts it, luminous prose. Arundhati Roy has been angry with the state for a very long time, for reasons that may be revealed in a future novel or autobiography. I have not followed her closely and have not read her 'God of Small Things' or her latest, but I do remember reading, among other things, that some time back she had seceded from India and become an independent mobile republic of one.

This republic is at war with India again. This time on behalf of the poor tribals who live in a vast forest area that was once called Dandkaranya.

Roy knows her statistics well and knows how to use and conceal them creatively to show you just the kind of picture she wants, the kind that will impress many but move a few, notwithstanding her incandescent words. One is almost charmed by the canvas she paints to lull you into believing that there is real pain in her heart for the forest people, that she wants nothing more than seeing that their lives improve, that her opposition to the state is born out of such feelings alone. But, at the end of it, like in her Outlook article entitled 'Mr Chidambaram's war', she emerges looking no better than an artificial flower; it looks very real - can't tell - but simply doesn't have the right smell.

Roy rejects the model of development that India is following and wants to dismantle and replace it, not really knowing with what and how; that does not concern her. Her focus is on destruction and violence, not construction and peace. You know what she wants, or at least what she wants you to believe, when she says that the bauxite and other minerals that are going to be mined should 'remain in the mountain', because if the hills are destroyed, 'the forests that clothe the tribals will be destroyed too'. She is convinced - not erroneously, given the unforgiveable track record of the Indian state thus far - that the tribals will have to pay the price of progress. So, she doesn't want them to pay that price, like most of us don't. But, unlike most of us, she is comfortable condemning them to paying a far greater one.

The only way to protect the tribals, as one can surmise from what Roy says, is by keeping them just where they have been for thousands of years. They should stick to bows and arrows, live on forest produce and let the forest clothe them. From that it must follow that they should also never cook their meals in aluminum utencils on steel stoves, and never take a bus or train - none of these has ever been made without mining ores from a mountain somewhere and changing the lives of the affected forever. So what if has been for the better in recent years elsewhere?

If the bauxite had remained in the mountains, how would Roy have travelled to get her Booker? Now that she has discovered , like a certain Gandhi did nearly a century ago, that to keep her and 'neo-colonialists' like us motoring and flying and connected to the whole world, the tribals of India will have to pay a price that she finds unacceptable, why does she not walk the Gandhi talk? Why does she not begin by making a personal sacrifice to reduce the burgeoning demand for metals and minerals worth trillions of dollars that lie inside the mountains? Will she, or anyone else, like to go back to the lives their ancestors led a few hundred years ago, to save the environment and to effectively ensure that those who have missed the progress bus do not catch it ever? Or would she rather live in a country that follows the development model of, and is run by, the likes of Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot? Does it matter to her that China, not the one that Maoists want to emulate, produces 10 times more steel than India? Have China's tribals paid a heavy price or are they happier, wealthier and better fed than ever before?

Roy is not going to do either. There is a big difference between genuinely wanting to do something for others out of empathy and deliberately provoking some others to attract attention to ones own self. No? Why is she not unequivocally denouncing the violence unleashed by Maoists and others? Why is she cleverly hiding behind selected views of others to mask Maoists and convey her support for what they are doing? Why is she not talking about the fact that arms and ammunition that Maoists have require money which tribals don’t have, as she herself admits? Why is she silent about the manner in which Maoists are extorting money from the very corporate houses and mining companies that they are supposed to be fighting against? She will, of course turn around and say that all reports pointing to this are false and that the latest CNN-IBN report to this effect is another manifestation of the state unleashing its most potent weapon, the 'embedded media'; Maoists can do little wrong.

Why is Roy focusing selectively on castigating the state for the force it is belatedly using to reclaim its writ, however faulty? Why is she craftily picking faults with any and everything that the state is doing and has done, knowing fully well that will not help set things right for the people whose cause she has picked up? Why is she deviously casting aspersions on everyone's integrity, Prime Minister downwards, only because India's mineral wealth has to be exploited to support the needs and improving lifestyles of millions, Roy included? Why does she want the state out of the forests where people are living sub-human lives and leave them at the mercy of armed thugs? What is it that makes her hate and oppose the state so much that she can see little wrong with those who oppose it, whether it is in the vast jungles of Dandkaranya or in the 'tiny valley of Kashmir'?

It is not love for the environment or the poorest of the poor - or anyone else - that resides in Roy's heart. That there is no space in it for anything except for hatred, particularly for the institution called the state, is evident from the fact that she has a problem even with the setting up of 'a brigade headquarters in Bilaspur (which will displace nine villages) and an airbase in Rajnandgaon (which will displace seven)'. As far as she is concerned, the state is always against the people, never for it; armed forces of the state only kill its people, not defend them - only those who fight against them do! To prove this to even herself, she sometimes lapses into imagining and inventing simplistic, childish scenarios. Sample this nursery story: "Kashmir used to have a Hindu king and a largely Muslim population, which was very, very backward and so on at the time, because at the time, you know, Muslims were discriminated against by that princely—in that princely state."

Arundhati Roy may have divorced the Indian state and seceded. But that unpleasant parting has evidently neither satisfied her, nor given her peace. On the contrary it seems to have left her even more embittered. There is violence inside her, not love. She wants the big world to believe that violence was done to her and that she did, and is doing, right. That is perhaps why she will not speak up against the Maoists; for her the only violence that is unacceptable is that of the state. Her war is against it. It is not for the poor she is talking about; they just happen to be on her side of the international border.

She does not want the state to correct its many flaws and empower and enrich its forgotten poor; she wants it to abdicate.

She says provocatively that the state needs a war, that the Maoists are to the Congress what Muslims were to the BJP. That may or may not be correct. But one thing is certain: Ms Roy doesn't want any war to end. As long as her luminous prose - that beautiful body that lacks a soul - helps her fight her personal wars from afar, as long as there are non-state actors across the world telling her from the sidelines that she is right, the poorest of the poor can remain just where they are - clothed by the forests that they have been living in long before there was a country called India.
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3. For Bharat's sake, and India's, dump colonial institutons

If a picture can say what a thousand words can't, this is one of them.

Taken at the recent Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi and given top billing across six columns on a page that bore the heading "Vision 2020", in the paper of November 01, 2009, it tells a story that is quite different from the one that the man who got it published wanted to.

Seen in the picture are two leader role models chosen by HT, Bollywood actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan. And guess who is in the middle? A certain mediocre journalist who is known more for his powerful connections and unconcealed political affiliation than for any insightful work that he has churned out in his long and understandably successful career. His strategic presence in the picture should also tell you something about the media that you always wanted to know but did not know whom to ask.

To me this picture symbolises, more than anything else, the existing and emerging leadership vacuum in this country. It also depicts the central role that the media is playing, as asked to perhaps, to deflect the attention of the nation from it. What better way to opiate Indians than with the help of a glamorous Bollywood couple?

Will anyone be surprised if HT has actually been paid handsomely for this seemingly free publicity ahead of Kareena and Saif's forthcoming film?

Here is a shot of the photo as it appeared in HT:

In the middle of all the noise in the media about the Naxal problem, brought to the fore again by the 'train-jacking' of the Delhi-Bhubaneswar Rajdhani by nearly 500 citizens, an extremely important aspect is being overlooked, yet again. But that is not surprising.

As far as media is concerned, everything has to be summarily reduced to politics after a perfunctory analysis because that is all that most media stars are drenched with, given their backgrounds and almost zero experience of, and exposure to, Bharat, a part of which is up in arms against India today. I still remember the shocking Nithari killing and cannibalisation case. A celebrated anchor, after a brief visit to the bowels of Noida, immediately turned the debate to the 'political dimension'. Why was that done? Because that is all what most Delhi journalists understand; the then CM of UP, Mulayam Yadav, and the Centre were daggers drawn - it made a great story. Also, most media stars we see have virtually no idea of how things work at the ground level on a day-to-day basis, or how the police, or any other instrument of state, is organised and the manner in which it functions.

That is mainly why serious systemic and institutional failures at the point of interface between the state and the citizen keep getting pushed under the carpet in every debate. That is what is happening now too.

In so far as politicians are concerned, the picture is no less dismal. At the state level, the whole thing has turned into a political blame-game between the Communists, who are in power in West Bengal, and Mamata Bannerjee who wants to evict them. At the level of the Centre, it has been turned into a black-and-white fight between the state and those who are questioning its failures through armed rebellion. As far as most human rights activists are concerned, it is almost exactly the opposite: the state is the terrorist; it is to blame for driving its own people to picking up arms to redress their long unheard grievances; therefore, it should abjure force and hold talks unconditionally.

The few senior cops who have been taking part in discussions across channels have, quite expectedly, been taking the official line that it is the duty of the state to act with force against those who have picked up the gun. Bureaucrats, particularly those who have served in Naxal affected areas - 150 districts - and have a first-hand experience of the sordid mess that their administration has been making over decades, are not to be seen or heard anywhere.

There is virtually no voice on the airwaves saying that there is something fundamentally flawed with our system of policing and administration that needs to be fixed. I have been saying for a long time that the antiquated, colonial system that India seamlessly continued to follow after the the British left needs to be overhauled completely. It is an elitist system that is primarily responsible for not letting British India become the Bharat that it should have after Independence. On the contrary, it has only increased that divide and created a whole new class of Indians who are completely disconnected from almost 80% of their country men who, for them, live in another country called Bharat.

The British created two institutions, represented today by the IAS and the IPS, with the sole purpose of using them as instruments of colonial power to ensure that the natives did not create any law and order problem against their imperial masters, and quietly paid taxes etc that the Empire wanted them to, to generate revenue for its own sustenance and growth. They were British institutions manned by English-speaking brown men for and on behalf of the Empire alone. Their organisational structure and functions were designed to prevent them from identifying themselves with natives or empowering them mentally or materially in a manner that would make them feel that they were equal to them, the Indian elite, much less the white man himself.

63 years after Independence, the structures and attitudes remain virtually the same, the exceptions being stray individuals. The DC and SP of a district continue to remain remote, imperial sahibs who reside in huge, barricaded bungalows looked after by a retinue of native servants. They continue to believe that they are the lords and masters of the many deprived souls with whom they share no affinity, and natural claimants to a 'cut' in the glamour and wealth of the few - criminals included - who need their protection and patronage to flourish without being troubled by the poor whom they sometimes exploit. So, most of them spend the little time they get in these appointments, where they are in direct contact with their own people, doing what India's colonial masters and rippers did to a conquered, alien people over a hundred years ago.

The connect that the most important powerful instruments of the state must have with its people as the equals that they are supposed to be in a democracy, thus, does not even begin. It is institutionally precluded. The same attitude and approach has filtered down to all other institutions and officials. That is why democracy and freedom have not yet touched millions of Indians, save during the occasional trudge to the voting booth. We are reminded of their existence only when they either pick up the gun to show their anger at their colonial administrators, or when they are misled by those like the Maoists who promise them that only the ones with guns share their heart beats and feel their pain, as equals, and will wrest their rights for them.

It is these very imperial administrators and police officers who, after a few years, go on to head various government departments and police forces. Since only they know exactly what is wrong within, but have been the direct beneficiaries and perpetrators of the increasing rot, they also know best how to con the rest into believing that since they are the best brains that India has thrown up after one exam, only they know what is for best for India, and are doing it, despite dirty politicians. They also know how to convince/pressure others that the only way to improve anything is by giving them even more power and control!

How completely these guys have corrupted the system can be gauged from just one example. When the Pay Commission recommendations were being finalised, former Cabinet Secretary TSR Balasubramanian actually said in a live television debate that bureaucrats like the Commerce Secretary, Finance Secretary etc deserved a Rs 10 crore salary, 1000 times the President's, for the kind of work they do. Can you see what he was trying to say? He was openly claiming a 'cut' for the the initials and recommendations that babus put on files, only because someone stands to benefit from those decisions financially!

This is the attitude at the very top of the heap, not at some lowly octroi post. It is this approach that has destroyed nearly every institution of the state. No official is ready to do something unless he is paid for it; and if he is well paid, he is willing to even to do what in his position he must not, no matter what happens to the people adversely affected by it, particularly if they are poor, second class natives who live in another world. When you add to this the impossibly complex rules that make it virtually impossible to hold government employees, from secretary to sweeper, accountable for almost anything, and assured promotions for doing little more than staying alive while in service, you get the sordid spectacle of sloth, absenteeism and near total absence of motivation to even think of excelling.

Subramanian has also said on a number of occasions, almost with pride, that corruption is no longer an issue and that nobody ever gets convicted for it; the rot is so deep and completely accepted. I may also mention here that, in a moment of weakness, a very senior official once told me that he was not in service for the salary; that was not sufficient to meet even the pocket money needs of his two teenage kids, he said. That says everything about what babudom has done to some of our best brains and what they have in turn done to destroy it.

Sitting in our urban bubbles, relatively untouched by the state, some of us may not find it easy to understand how colonial institutions of the state have alienated its citizens in the remote areas that we will perhaps never step into. Some celebrity activists do go there, but more often than not, they do so in pursuit of greater visibility and space in the national media, and in the West, rather than out of any genuine empathy or sense of belonging with these people. That is why they invariably come out with half-baked, uni-dimensional, even childish, responses that are often dishonest, because they primarily want to sensationalise and provoke rather than bring about the real change that is needed to help those whose cause they claim to champion.

India's top civil servants are not going to let the failed and almost completely dysfunctional colonial structure that benefits their small but very powerful tribe be disturbed at all. Unless they are forced to. Given our equally corrupt political system that has aggravated the problem by promoting rule by division rather than inclusion, one can be reasonably certain that meaningful change is not going to be ushered in willingly.

Yes, the armed rebellion of the Maoists needs to be crushed and the writ of the state established. But what we must realise is that unless the existing institutions of administration, policing etc are discarded and replaced by ones that firmly re-connect the state with its people as equals, rebellion in some form or the other will have to be faced time and again. Today it is in the hinterland; tomorrow it will be in your city. The form and method may be different but the rage and pain will be the same. And the intensity will keep on rising till India and Bharat become one.
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7. Bharat and India: armed rebellion and mental secession

Pakistan is an idea that was doomed to fail the moment it got the shape of a state. Although MA Jinnah himself divided India into two on the basis of religion, he held on to the exactly opposite belief that had it not been for the the "angularities" between Hindus and Muslims, and communities within them, "we would have been free people long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this." Ironically, these words by were uttered just three days before Pakistan became a reality.

For many reasons, Jinnah could not see that there was a fundamental and irreconcilable clash between what he had done and what he believed, not just for his Pakistan but for the whole of India that he belonged to till August 14, 1947. That is why, despite doing what he should never have based on a set of his own beliefs, he visualised Pakistan as a state that would have nothing to do with the only one dimension along which it had been created: Islam. He did not want his creation to fall into the same trap that had divided, weakened and subjugated India in the past, and that he had pushed it into, again.

One can only speculate what would have happened had Pakistan become a secular state and had not systematically driven out/converted almost all Hindus and Sikhs who became its citizens on August 14, 1947. May be the recurring fear in some sections of Pakistan that it would have re-merged with India would have come true. It is equally possible that it may have flourished as an Independent country.

The way events have unfolded over the last few decades, and as they are playing out right now in Pakistan, it is becoming increasingly evident that the new nation sealed its future the moment it decided to define itself only on the basis of Islam, after Jinnah's demise. It is worth repeating here that Pakistan is the only multi-ethnic, multi-lingual state created from nowhere on the basis of Islam. Perhaps Jinnah was aware that the Arabs from whose land Islam emanated, and who were all Muslims, had never been politically united by their religion. Despite one language, one race and one religion, they are now divided into 22 countries. In fact, it is likely that had it not been for oil and the Americans - who are there and keeping things under tight control because of their need for that oil - not only would Arabs have remained pathetically underdeveloped, the many countries that they have created would have been at each others' throats.

Those who guided Pakistan after Jinnah obviously did not learn any lessons even from subsequent developments in the Arab word. Had they done so, they would have seen that all efforts to unite Arabs ended in failure. The brief unification of Egypt and Syria as United Arab Republic lasted just three years between 1958 and 1961. The Arab Federation between Iraq and Jordan lasted all of five months in 1958. The effort that survived the longest was the Federation of Arab Republics between Egypt, Libya and Syria that lasted five years from 1972 to 1977. Why could people of one race and one language not come together? Why did Islam fail to unite them? Was it due to various erroneous, intolerant, conflicting and violent interpretations of Islam that the concept of Muslim brotherhood could not be translated into political unity?

The first jolt to the idea and ideology of Pakistan was given by the breaking away of East Pakistan in 1971. That division was not an aberration. It could not have happened any other way. West Pakistan would never have ceded control to the more populous Eastern half; religious affinity was not strong enough to reconcile the practical demands of political power. The remaining part of Pakistan, the one known as Pakistan today, could possibly have been kept intact after that split, had its leaders learnt the right lessons and not tried to 'invent' Pakistan as a logical entity by manufacturing India's history solely on the basis of Islam, with the attendant rejection of and hatred towards all other influences and developments that are integral to this ancient land, to which they still belong as much as any one else does, even though they want to pretend otherwise.

But, Pakistan's leaders decided to take what is going to prove to be a catastrophic turn, by turning towards Wahhabi Islam, the version of the religion that is followed in Saudi Arabia. As per William Dalrymple," Saudi Arabians have invested heavily in madrasas in the North-West Frontier Province and Punjab, with dramatic effect, radically changing the religious culture of an entire region." The Taliban and the Al Qaida are the visible militant faces of this version of Islam which is completely intolerant of all other faiths. They were encouraged to flourish in Pakistan and Afghanistan because they were thought to be the perfect ideological weapons, forged on an erroneous interpretation of the concept of jihad, that could be exploited to oppose both the Western world and India, with the ultimate aim of ushering in the political rule of Islam all over the world.

Wahhabi Islam is so radical that it rejects all other versions of Islam, including Shia, too. It should, therefore, have been anticipated by the handlers and trainers of the Taliban, Lahskar-e-Toiba etc that whenever these groups thought there was an opportunity, they would try to establish the rule of this version of Islam in the whole of Pakistan. It should also have been anticipated that men following this ideology would penetrate the military too. There is little doubt that has already happened over a period of time, with the military brass turning a blind, even indulgent eye to it. The extent of the penetration is not yet fully known to outsiders, and I suspect that this will prove to be critical in the months ahead.

In February 2009, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari had admitted that his country was fighting for 'survival' in the face of the onslaught of the Taliban. No one took him seriously then, given his dubious track record. But the speed at which developments have unfolded over the last eight months proves that he was speaking the truth. The danger is real and grave.

Pakistan first tried to bury disturbing developments in the Swat Valley by buying peace with the Taliban by handing it over to them and allowing them to introduce Sharia there. Within weeks, however, the army had to go in to clean them out and re-establish control of the state. In the middle of all this, over two million people fled Swat, creating a huge humanitarian crisis. That did little to get things under control and terror attacks have continued unabated till now.

In October, a number of terror attacks, including a day long siege of the army headquarters, took place in three of Pakistan's four provinces. More dangerously, they involved not only Pashtuns but also Punjabi and Kashmiri factions nurtured and trained by the ISI to fight India. These have forced Pakistan's armed forces to launch military operations in South Waziristan where the Taliban are based, employing jet fighters, attack helicopters and tanks and around 28,000 troops. They have captured Kotkai, home town of Taliban Chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and claim that militants will be flushed out within a month. Is the story going to end there? It has only begun.

The reaction of the Taliban to the latest military offensive has impacted the whole of Pakistan like never before. Schools and colleges were shut in all four provinces following an attack on the Islamic University in Islamabad. Terror is now no longer confined to Pakistan's wild west. Also, for the first time ever, Pakistani Army has made the startling admission that the country faces a serious threat from coordinated attacks by Punjabi, Al Qaida and Taliban militants who include soldiers in their ranks and span the whole country.

In July 2009, former Pakistan President Perez Musharraf, the cocky commando who invents victory even in humiliating defeat, boasted in an interview with Karan Thapar that he foresaw no danger to Pakistan from the Al Qaida or Taliban "as long as the armed forces are there".

In that assertion was the unspoken admission that Islam, instead of keeping Pakistan together, has achieved exactly the opposite, and that the state of Pakistan survives only because the military is in a position to hold it together through the use of force. 63 years after Pakistan was created, the glue that brought it together has turned into an explosive. There is now effectively nothing left to keep the people bound together in a natural union.

The military has held out till now, even though it is having to fight the very forces that it once created to act as its 'force multipliers', as weapons of the Pakistani state against infidels in the East and West of the country. Learning from history, it has reportedly deployed non-Pashtun troops in its ongoing operations in South Waziristan. But with Punjabi extremists also beginning to join the fight against the state in the form that it exists today, a state that supports the Satan US in its ground operations in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan against 'pure Islamists', it is perhaps only a matter of time before the military faces a serious rebellion from within. Whenever that happens, Pakistan will unravel even faster than we can imagine now. It is only a question of time.

Fatima Bhutto, niece of slain leader Benazir Bhutto, can also see that Pakistan is hell-bent on self-destruction. Manufacture of fear, she says, has become its chief industry and made it a country of debilitating Chinese whispers. "What happens to a Pakistan that can no longer defend itself from its own people?", she asks. The answer to that question must be haunting many Pakistanis.

History has already proved Jinnah wrong. No one has suffered more from the Partition of India than the very Muslims for whose empowerment Jinnah forgot his own secular understanding of the factors that led to India's subjugation. Divided in three countries, they have lost the power and influence that they would have wielded in a united India. Those who are now Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have also lost the opportunity of being a part of an India that is rapidly emerging as an economic super power. They are now huddled into two small nations. Bangladesh is an almost inconsequential country while Pakistan has made such an unpardonable mess of itself that, no matter what political shape its geographical area takes, bar the shouting their bankrupt country/countries will henceforth be remote-controlled by some external power or the other. Subjugation is back.

The "angularities" between and within religions that Jinnah spoke of have, thanks to the path Pakistan has chosen, become irreconcilable ideologies - Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations - with no common ground for peaceful co-existence. But, no matter what anyone might say, the harsh reality is that in a changed world, Al Qaida, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and similar Islamic extremist groups are not going get Pakistan anywhere by pursuing the violent path of intolerance of and confrontation with those whose beliefs and practices are at variance with theirs. On the contrary, as is already more than evident, they are only going to rapidly drive Pakistan into poverty, deprivation and eventual self-destruction.

Perhaps this is one of those lessons that will be learned only after a violent course has destructively spent itself fully.

Picture: The Guardian
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