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

[yasir ~يا سر]

yea, its a pretty brutal problem. i am wondering whether a cornberwas
turned, in fact i still think so., despite a half-cynical lamentation i read
in another paper. sob, sob.

y

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>wrote:

> "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.
>
> Email: winlust at yahoo.com
>
> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=199842
>
>
>
>
>
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