Defending the ideology

RECENTLY, the new prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, tasked the military with defending not only national territory but also the ideological frontiers of the state. The statement was an uncomfortable reminder of the past 60 years during which the armed forces have remained the defenders of the country’s territory and ideology.

As retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan rightly pointed out, it speaks of a sense of inferiority amongst political players when they push the ideological debate on the military’s table. It was pointed out that giving the military the task to defend ideology was indeed flawed. The problem is not just about giving this task to the military but what exactly the organisation is supposed to defend.

We are still grappling with the question of what is the country’s ideology. Is it a country created for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent and meant to provide them with space to live? Or to build a fortress of Islam which would emerge as a counter-balance against all other forces in the South Asian region? These are two different kinds of ideas.

According to the first one, since the Muslims of the subcontinent didn’t think that they had a chance to enforce a favourable distribution of resources, they had to create another country. Since the issue was really a socio-economic one, such a state would have naturally proposed the better distribution of resources amongst various ethnic and religious communities. However, this did not happen. After 60 years of existence we see society fractured along ethnic, religious and sectarian lines.

The Pakistani establishment is often surprised to see Pakistanis discussing their issues outside. This is mainly because state ideology does not have sufficient space for people to voice their issues within. So they are constantly looking for external neutral arbiters.

Does the ideology then include the desires and aspirations of ethnic minorities like the Baloch, Sindhis, Mohajirs, Seraiki, Pakhtun and others who also want to be part of it but instead feel deprived? Or is it that we will always have to employ the power of the bullet in defence of this amorphous ideology as happened in the 1970s in East Pakistan and Balochistan or in the 1980s and 1990s in Sindh or more recently again in Balochistan?

The main issue with handing over the defence of ideology to any state bureaucracy is that the latter tends to define ideology in bureaucratic terms which means something that can be imagined and implemented easily. The nation has drifted from being a country for Muslims to one which is supposed to defend a larger religious ideology. Such conceptualisation becomes doubly problematic for both the nation and its armed forces that have been dragged over the years into defending a larger than life ideology.

As a result of the founding fathers not defining the country’s ideology — an issue compounded by the state’s problematic politics — the country drifted towards posing as a fortress of Islam. Religion became one of the tools for legitimising power. Even seemingly secular leaders like General Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used this gimmickry to win popular support.

During Ayub Khan’s time, Pakistan was presented as the largest Muslim country on the basis of population, something that angered other Muslim states like Egypt. Later, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto talked about Pakistan being the leader of the Muslim world. Every leader raised the bar further. This naturally influenced the military’s thinking as well.

Religion was also used aggressively as a military-strategic tool. Here, the reference is not just to General Ziaul Haq’s period in power but to generations of generals before him. Islam was used for the first time during the 1947/48 war with India as the ‘tool’ with which to muster support among the northern tribesmen. This tactic was repeated during the 1965 war.

Again, strategic links were developed between the military and religious parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami to raise sub-organisations like Al-Shams and Al-Badr that could fight the war in East Pakistan against the Mukti Bahini. While it didn’t save the day for Pakistan, the links between the religious parties and the seemingly secular military continued. The links were further strengthened during the Zia years and later on.

The links between the military and militants, who are also considered as tools to fill the gap between conventional and nuclear wars, are indicative of how ideology is defined by state bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the problem has come to haunt us today in the form of suicide bombings and terrorism.

The link between militancy and the military is one of the consequences of allowing the military to define and then defend ideology. The links grew deeper due to the post-colonial nature of the military. The senior officer cadre used religion as a tool without much fear of how this would impact on the rank and file which was expected to follow the commands of the seniors.

Since interaction between the militants and the military was limited to certain segments, the bulk of the organisation was not affected. In any case, given the country’s socio-economic conditions, the bulk of the men would follow the top managers even if they did not ideologically approve of their orders.

This is just one part of the problem. The other relates to a sense of self-righteousness amongst the officer cadre regarding their affinity with the state as opposed to millions of civilians who are seen as a threat to national integrity. The majority of civilians (certainly the politicians) are seen as unsympathetic to the national interest. The tragedy is that the men in uniform often judge the bulk of civilians (even those who are not corrupt) on the basis of how they have been indoctrinated by their organisation and their limited knowledge of civilian life.

For instance, all business entrepreneurs are viewed with suspicion because they are seen as trying to make a profit even when they do business with public sector, military-controlled defence production institutions. The need for a commercial entrepreneur to make profit is often not understood.

The country today is faced with an imbalance between military and civilian institutions and lives. These are two species which co-exist without the semblance of an equal relationship. Under the circumstances, it is not fair to entrust the more powerful party with the role of defining and defending the ideological frontiers. A critical problem that this would create is one of a never-ending sense of hostility.

After 60 years, it is still not too late to debate and agree upon an ideology based on a dialogue amongst different stakeholders. The rest of Pakistan badly needs a sense of ownership of the country.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

A disposable commodity

THIS is not the first time that an editor in India has been sacked unceremoniously. Nor will it be the last time.

But the case of M.J. Akbar, who was until recently the editor of The Asian Age, raises certain fundamental questions. Does the owner have the right to dismiss his editor whenever he wants or however he wants?

Akbar was on his way to office a few mornings ago as usual, when he heard on his mobile a staff member telling him that his name had been removed from the print line. He went to office, picked up his papers and walked out. There were no second thoughts by the owner, nor any letter of explanation — much less an apology. I believe the owner, a senior Congressman from Hyderabad, was under pressure from party president Sonia Gandhi to get rid of Akbar who, according to 10 Janpath, was vehemently opposed to her.

This reminds me of the days before the emergency. I was then working with The Indian Express. Ramnath Goenka, its proprietor, would tell me that he had been told again and again by several top Congress leaders to sack me. At that time, he was in a mood to take on Mrs Indira Gandhi and hence the question of my removal did not arise.

The Editors’ Guild of India took up Akbar’s case at my initiative recently. There was hardly any speaker who did not express regret over his fate. A committee has been constituted to look into not only the proprietor-editor relationship but also the misuse of power by journalists who allegedly take money for using or not using a news item.

Talking generally, other editors have also been fired in the past. Frank Moraes, Khushwant Singh, George Verghese, Pran Chopra, S. Mulgaokar, H.K. Dua and Vinod Mehta have all been victims of political pressure. If I recall correctly, the only two editors out of these who joined issue with the proprietor were: Pran, directly against The Statesman, and Verghese through the Press Council of India. One had to compromise with the management and, in the other’s case the government dissolved the Press Council.

The message it sent out was that an editor was a disposable commodity. He accordingly trimmed his sails. After the emergency, things became worse for editors because when proprietors found that they had caved in before the government, they (the proprietors) thought that the editors only needed pressure which, when applied, would make them surrender abjectly.

Proprietors and the government came closer because the government found it could deal with them more easily since they had other interests. Editors increasingly were reduced to the position of liaison people between the government and the proprietor. Proprietors were now seen at government VIP receptions, banquets and such other places which had previously been the exclusive domain of editors.

The profile of the proprietors also changed. The new generation returning from abroad was sophisticated and socially ambitious. I remember C.R. Irani, managing director of The Statesman, asking me, “Why don’t ministers call me instead of you because I can do much more than the editor?”

Yet Akbar’s case raises important questions. The constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Jawaharlal Nehru even had legislation enacted to ensure that working journalists were not fired at the proprietors’ will. He thought that journalists while pursuing their jobs could hurt people in the establishment and they, in turn, could punish journalists through their proprietors. In a way, he insulated those working in the pursuit of reporting and commenting. This practice has, however, been circumvented by the scheme of contracts which proprietors have introduced.

The question is that if the freedom of expression is to be used as a weapon by the proprietors through journalists over whose heads the contract hangs like the sword of Damocles, what happens to the freedom of the press which the constitution framers had guaranteed? They could not have imagined a time when the piper would call the tune. If this is so, then the time has come to reconsider the original constitutional guarantee.

Since neither the rulers nor the proprietors have respect for the sanctity of press freedom, the nation faces a challenge which a democratic society has to take up in the interest of its polity that has a free press as one of the pillars on which the structure stands. In fact, this principle was defeated by Mrs Indira Gandhi when she first talked about ‘commitment’ and then imposed the emergency to gag the press.

The scenario, after her departure, has become grimmer. Except for a small interlude when the Janata government was in power, the nexus between the proprietor and the government has become more intense.

Still worse for the fourth estate was the influence of the corporate sector. Freedom of the press began to have another meaning: the corporate sector was more important than the government. Now it calls the shots. What sells is the corporate sector’s principle of peddling goods for maximum profit and the same thing has been duplicated by the press. Where journalism was a profession at one time, it has now been reduced to an industry. Newspapers are a product, just like soap or talcum powder. No idealism is involved, no social obligation is respected. It is just what sells that counts.

The result is that the press as the propagator of ideas — TV networks are worse — is more or less dead. The media is now simply a vehicle for title tattle. Stars in film and on the cricket field are the media’s icons and one can see them splashed all over newspapers with nauseatingly repeated appearances on TV screens.

The casualty in this whole process has been the credibility of the media. People believe less and less in the printed word and what they see on screen. They are confused and lost. One thing is sure: the media has lost credibility which it cannot get back. People do not trust it any more. Its right to advocate the aspirations of the common man has been forfeited. If the flame of press freedom were to ever burn again, many Akbars would come back.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.

Balochistan peace prospects

THE establishment in Pakistan has over the years ignored the advice of international agencies and human rights groups to exercise restraint in Balochistan.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) prepared two comprehensive reports on the provinces, urging Islamabad to stop using force and to initiate a dialogue on Balochistan’s political crisis. But all this had no impact on the powers that be.

After the Feb 18 elections, the PPP’s co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, tendered an informal apology for the injustices and excesses meted out to the Baloch. He also announced that an all-parties conference would be convened to start a comprehensive dialogue to end the crisis in Balochistan. His move was cautiously welcomed by the Baloch nationalist parties. They, however, insisted that consultation would only be held with the ruling coalition if it proved by its actions that it was in a position to overturn the establishment’s notorious polices of the past.

At present the province is going through a phase of hope and despair. Many believe that talks will repair the damage done. But others consider the peace offer as a tactical move by the establishment. An end to Balochistan’s bloodletting is certainly overdue. Earlier talks had failed because General Musharraf’s government wasn’t willing to negotiate on the issues that would diminish the establishment’s power over provincial matters.

According to Baloch leaders, the establishment is the key player in Balochistan. Without its willingness to relinquish its hold on the affairs of the province the Baloch will remain at odds with Islamabad.

Sardar Attaullah Mengal, a veteran Baloch politician, stated that “issues with regard to Balochistan are crystal clear”. It is no use quarrelling with the powerless Baloch about what they need. It is much more important to change the mindset of the powerful civil-military establishment.

Baloch nationalists have offered strong but clear terms for talks at the PPP-sponsored APC. The Jamhoori Watan Party has demanded that a murder case be registered against President Pervez Musharraf for the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti and other Baloch, security forces be fully pulled back from Dera Bugti and other areas, the military operation be ended, the ‘missing’ be traced, displaced people be rehabilitated, cantonments in Sui be dismantled and all political prisoners be released. The Balochistan National Party and the National Party along with other groups have presented a similar list of confidence-building measures as conditions for talks.

Amongst the Baloch, the JWP, BNP and Marri tribe are the most aggrieved parties in the conflict. JWP’s top leader and veteran Baloch nationalist Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and young Nawabzada Balach Marri lost their lives in cold-blooded operations. Mass displacement, killings, loss of property and disappearances have been reported from Dera Bugti and Kohlu districts. The BNP has suffered heavily on the political front. Its leader Sardar Akhtar Mengal was detained and kept in solitary confinement for 18 months. Activists disappeared, arbitrary arrests were made and property was destroyed.

It is generally recognised that the underlying differences between the Baloch and the establishment lie at the root of the unending crisis. The crisis of confidence between the Baloch and Islamabad hampers dialogue. The Baloch believe they have been robbed and betrayed by the establishment for the last 60 years. Hence the Baloch intelligentsia, political activists and the diaspora are reluctant to see their leadership sit across the table and negotiate with Islamabad without clear signs of a change in approach.

The establishment must come forward and wholeheartedly support the PPP’s reconciliation efforts, demonstrating its willingness to grant political autonomy to the provinces and allowing experienced and neutral international think-tanks and experts to devise a strategy for conflict management to facilitate the mediation process. Thus alone can the people’s trust be restored and a dialogue be initiated.

The truth and reconciliation process has been tested in several places all over the world. It envisages conflict prevention, resolution and management. In Balochistan, the conflict prevention process was thwarted by the establishment in December 2005. As stated by the ICG in its 2006 report, “by choosing confrontation, the Musharraf government bears responsibility for the state of the conflict in Balochistan”.

The key to peace lies in the cessation of hostilities and violent activities from both sides. This needs to be done through a formal process.

Unfortunately, the situation in Balochistan is frightening. The two sides have failed to reach any agreement on ending hostilities. As observed by NP leader, Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo, “the military and paramilitary troops are still active, their intelligence networks are still operational and are hounding people struggling for their rights”. Nawabzada Jamil Akbar Khan Bugti, son of late Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, has also denied reports of withdrawal of security forces from Dera Bugti. He reported an attack by security forces in Dera Bugti just some days ago claiming that his tribesmen were in detention and were being tortured.

The PPP-led committee that has been set up must avoid following the futile road taken by the parliamentary committee on Balochistan created earlier. The bulk of its members were irrelevant and their presence complicated the political process. The process of reconciliation and conflict resolution must now be exclusive, involving real stakeholders and aggrieved parties from both sides so that talks can be held in depth.

The Baloch leadership — from the parties and the fighters — must be consulted exclusively to get it to nominate representatives to negotiate on political, economic, social and cultural issues. The establishment must be a party to the talks through the National Security Council.True Baloch nationalists, like a majority of pro-democracy parties in Pakistan, do not recognise the NSC as a democratic body, but unfortunately the NSC is the real establishment, comprising the civil-military elite. In any future talks, the NSC must be a part of the dialogue process to represent the establishment to address the issue of political decentralisation with reference to Balochistan. The third and important element should be the ruling coalition.

The success of the APC will depend on the good faith of the powerful — but unfriendly — establishment, whose policy dilemma has led to ceaseless centre-province confrontation.

The government must come up with a generous formula of granting substantial autonomy to the region. Otherwise, futile deliberations will further multiply political frustrations. n

The writer is a senator.

balochbnp@gmail.com

Global crisis & Marx

TO piece together the fragments of today’s worldwide crisis is to grapple with a sense of deja vu. The sweep of globalisation; strident inequalities (the Financial Times recently ran a breathless piece about the Bond-style security mechanisms built into the luxury homes of the international superclass — alongside stories of food riots); vast intervention by central banks to prop up the banking system; the origin of the crisis in the explosive mixture of masters and leftovers of the universe — what does all this remind you of?

It takes a reading of Francis Wheen’s concise and lucid Marx’s Das Kapital — a biography (Atlantic) for the penny to drop. The cantankerous ghost hovering over the global turmoil and glorying in the discomfiture of its chief agents is that of London’s Highgate Cemetery’s most eminent denizen and the UK’s great revolutionary.

The sense of the grinding of the gears of history, the shifting of the political and economic plates, comes straight from Karl Marx (although some might also want to add an element of Groucho). When the governor of the Bank of England talks of protecting people from the banks, and plaintively recommends that graduates should consider a career in industry as well as the City of London (financial sector), shimmering eerily through his remarks is the Gothic vision of alienation and auto-destruction that Marx outlined 150 years ago.

Here in the middle of plenty is the grotesque exploitation of the poorest (in a new report, the British umbrella organisation for trade unions — the TUC — astonished even itself with findings of UK workplace exploitation that are in a direct line from those observed by Marx and Engel). Here, too, is the appropriation of the spoils by the extraordinarily privileged few, and the socialisation of the losses on to the many.

Marx would have been unsurprised to learn that, on average Britons, now work one-seventh more hours than 25 years ago for less financial security in old age, or of the painful lack of engagement (also recently highlighted in a new report) of most people in labour that feeds the machine of capital rather than the individual. Above all, the overweening economic dominance of the City of London and financial services to the UK economy would have provoked a grim nod of recognition — never has Marx’s ‘enslavement to capital’ seemed less hyperbole and been more visible than today.

Marx’s work is usually discredited by association with the failed centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and by the failure of capitalism to collapse as he had predicted. But Marx’s Marxism was never a prescription — it was Lenin and Stalin who ‘froze it into dogma’.

In fact, apart from the predictions of capitalism’s impending demise, it is remarkable how much its sharpest critic got right. Marx foresaw many of the effects of globalisation, which he called ‘the universal interdependence of nations.’

His description of the ‘cash nexus’ foreshadowed the economic rationality at the centre of today’s mainstream economic and management theories. Most prescient, as writers as different as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter and the billionaire trader George Soros acknowledge, was Marx’s insight that capitalism’s most potent enemy was not outside but inside: market fundamentalism, in Soros’ term, or, for Schumpeter, the waves of creative destruction that would eventually swamp whole economies. Capitalism, as is now clear, has most to fear from capitalists.

Marx vividly characterised capitalism as a kind of Frankenstein which would end up destroying its creator. As graphically, in Das Kapital’s sprawling chapter on the working day, Marx described capital as ‘dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’.

That is as different from today’s dry economic discourse as it is possible to get. And this, as Wheen notes, is the point. Das Kapital is notoriously incomplete. Only the first of six projected volumes was completed before his death, and three more posthumously from notes and fragments. Marx displaced much of his energy into fighting creditors and conducting polemics.

But capitalism is incomplete and chaotic too, as today’s turbulence proves. Marx reminds us of the uncomfortable things we have grown so used to that we no longer see — including the ability and need to change.

—The Observer, London