[Reader-list] Reversing 800 years of history - Islamabad Diary by Ayaz Amir

[Kshmendra Kaul]

"Reversing 800 years of history"
 





Friday, September 25, 2009

By Ayaz Amir 



All the great Muslim rulers of our past whom we look upon as our heroes were either Turks or Afghans, from Mahmud Ghaznavi to the last of the Mughals -- Caucasians all of them, who, in successive waves of invasion and conquest from the colder climates of the north, made themselves masters of Hindustan. 

For 800 years -- from 1192 AD. when Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the second battle of Tarain (in present-day Haryana) to the establishment of British rule in Bengal in the 18th century -- every ruler of Hindustan of any note or merit was of Caucasian origin. In all this vast expanse of history, the lands which now constitute Pakistan could produce only one ruler of indigenous origin who could lay claim to any ability: Ranjit Singh, Maharajah of Punjab. 

We, the inhabitants of Pakistan, may claim in moments of (misplaced) exaltation that we are descended from those early warriors. But this is a false claim. We are now more sub-continental than Central Asian. Just as empires and nations rise and fall, races too do not remain the same over time. The Mughals were a hardy people when they marched into India under Babar. After 200 years of unbroken rule their dynasty -- descended from the great Taimur -- had become degenerate and soft. 

We may name our missiles Ghori and Abdali -- although Abdali is somewhat inappropriate, considering that Ahmed Shah Abdali in his repeated invasions brought much suffering to Punjab -- but this is a throwback to a past far removed from our present. Comfortable thought or not, Ranjit Singh's kingdom of Punjab is more relevant to our present-day conditions than those distant days of glory and conquest. 

The challenge thus posed is a daunting one. For 800 years we have produced no ruler of native ability. But if Pakistan is to come into its own, if it is to throw off the mantle of failure of the past 60 years and forge a new future for itself, then its native sons and daughters have to create something new: capacity and ability where none have existed before -- except in the solitary example of the one-eyed king of Lahore, Maharajah Ranjit Singh. 

We are going to get no infusion of fresh blood from beyond the high mountains. No Ghaznavi or Ghori is coming to rescue us or establish a new kingdom. We are on our own. It is for us to make something of Pakistan or disfigure it. The kingdom of heaven is here; redemption is here; salvation is here. 

The very enormity of this challenge should teach us some tolerance. We expect miracles from our rulers -- the Ayub Khans, the Yahya Khans, the Ishaq Khans, the Zardaris, the Gilanis and no doubt the Sharifs -- without pausing to reflect that what we expect from them is nothing less than a reversal of history. We expect them to be the heralds of a miracle: the creation and expression of native talent and ability. 

Not that it can't be done or will never happen. But at least we should be aware of the extent of the challenge. We have to create something wholly new, something which in Punjab, the Frontier, Balochistan, Sindh, has not existed except in the dim annals of pre-history. There may have been native rulers of ability in times past but we know little of them and even if they did exist they did so before the advent of Muslim rule in India. 

And even if we pride ourselves on our Muslim past, let us not forget that by the time the British arrived in India and set about establishing their empire, the Muslims of the sub-continent had declined to an inferior position. They were no longer a master race. So much so, that they were reduced to demanding from the British special safeguards, such as separate electorates, to protect their status and position. 

Consider the irony of this. Once the Muslims, a tiny minority, had ruled India. Now they were afraid -- or their leading lights were afraid -- that they would be swamped by the Hindu majority, fearful that in a united India what they considered to be their just rights would be denied them, that they would not be able to hold their heads above the water. 

This philosophy of fear -- and there is no point in denying that it was that -- was dictated by circumstances. After Ottoman defeat in the First World War, Turkish nationalism found expression in the idea of a Turkish republic confined to the Turkish heartland: the Anatolian plateau. The idea of empire was no longer feasible. Mustafa Kemal realised this, his vision clearer and sharper than most of his countrymen. In India, Muslim nationalism found expression in the idea of Pakistan. Jinnah's greatness lay in helping achieve this idea. 

But there was one vital difference between Turkey and Pakistan. The Anatolian plateau was the solid centre of the Ottoman Empire, what the Turks called their true home. The centre of the Muslim empire throughout the 800 years of Muslim dominance in India was central India, around Delhi. But Indian partition and the birth of Pakistan meant retreating from this centre and creating a new nexus of existence on the western and eastern marches of the sub-continent. Pakistan thus arose on what used to be not the centre but the peripheries of Muslim power in India. 

This was a new challenge: of creating a new locus of existence where none had existed before. Muslim kingdoms had existed in South India. They had of course existed in North India. But there had never been an independent Muslim kingdom in the areas now constituting Pakistan. And, to repeat the point made earlier, there was in Pakistan no tradition of outstanding native ability: no native ruler of Multan or Lahore, Peshawar or Bannu, Hyderabad or Thatta, Quetta or Kalat, who could be cited as some kind of a role model. 

We had roads and bridges, canals and waterworks, a judicial and an administrative system, the trappings of democracy, the concept of elections and political parties, but, apart from the one example of Ranjit Singh, no tradition of native ability. The idea of being Turkish had always existed in the Turkish mind. The Muslim faith was part of this idea but it wasn't the whole of it. Pakistan was a wholly new invention and it was a reflection of the difficulties besetting the idea of Pakistan that our leading figures declared, very early on, that Islam was the basis of our nationhood. 

Indeed, we made religion a fallback position, seeking refuge in its dialectics when more attention should have been paid to temporal problems. The discontent arising in East Pakistan was proof that temporal problems needed a temporal solution. Today it is the same in Balochistan whose grievances are crying out for something more than the usual palliatives. 

The fight against the Taliban may yet prove our salvation. It is putting us through a formative experience. We were not willing to take on this fight, using all the mental resources at our disposal to avoid it. But this struggle has been forced on us by circumstances. The Taliban had become a domestic headache. To this was added external pressure from the American presence in Afghanistan, forcing the Pakistan army to shed indecision and adopt a decisive course of action. 

What does the idea of Talibanism tell us? That it is a foreign importation and as such alien to our soil and condition. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar just don't fit into the idea of Pakistan. But thanks to our own misunderstandings and follies we had allowed this alien concept to take root in our soil. 

Hopefully things are changing. Pakistan has to be an autonomous concept, sufficient unto itself and free of alien viruses. The struggle is not over. The idea of Pakistan is yet in the making but it will come into its own, never to falter or indeed wither, when we realise that the historic task before us is to turn the mediocrity of our ruling class, including the confusion that often besets the military mind, into a vision springing from the needs of our own society.

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