A spitting image indeed
LOOKING at it dispassionately, it is evident that middle-class Indians have acquired many reckless and jarring values from Pakistan.
Mindless consumerism pervasive in India today is something Pakistanis have indulged in for decades — the fawning slave-master nexus with Washington DC and, not least, the nascent attraction for mixing religious bigotry with RDX. In all these, Indians have followed Pakistan’s lead.
When Dr Manmohan Singh landed in Washington on his maiden visit as prime minister, the children of his top officials — including the foreign minister, the foreign secretary and the national security advisor, among others, not to exclude the prime minister himself — lived in the US. To catch up with Pakistan such a post-Nehruvian push was necessary.
Giving the military an excessive role in guiding foreign policy (in the name of strategic advantage in Siachen, for example) is another element that wasn’t originally there in India, quite the opposite of what has been the norm for Pakistan.
I think this is what Fahmida Riaz lamented in her biting poem ‘Tum bilkul hum jaise nikley, ab tak kahaa’n chhupey thay bhai?’ (You’ve turned out just like us, where were you hiding all this while, brother?) A friend of reason and ready wit from across Wagah once dilated upon the idiomatic Urdu expression of unnees-bees ka farq to set the quotient of consumerist gluttony between India and Pakistan. According to him the difference was in the ratio of 18:21. Why not the idiomatic 19:20, though? “If I say unnees-bees, my Indian friends will feel offended,” he chortled.
Much of the early consumerist dichotomy can be explained by the fact that crony capitalism came to Pakistan way before it was ushered into India in the 1990s. I had heard of a distant cousin who was addicted to Coca-Cola a couple of decades before anyone in India knew of the cultish American drink. In fact there was such a groundswell of opposition, a veritable mass movement against it, that the soft drink was expelled from the country by the government that restored India’s democracy in 1977.
Earlier, international brand names such as Burmah-Shell, British Petroleum and Esso were eased out from postcolonial India in a drive to seek a self-reliant, egalitarian and level-headed society. It is another story that the generic name of engine oils used by motorcar mechanics continued to be Mobil Oil (popularly pronounced mobiaayel) for several more years to come.
Call it populism if you will, but Indira Gandhi’s campaign to nationalise private banks in the late 1960s had popular support just as her curbs on royal privileges and a halt to privy purses for feudal scions, a relic of the colonial period, found mass approval. In this regard Bhutto’s populism with similar egalitarian motifs may have followed the example of a pre-consumerist India.
An early role model for middle-class Pakistanis was perhaps the dapper founder of the country himself vis-à-vis the Indians, who mostly followed Gandhi in shunning ‘conspicuous consumption’ as wasteful.
Gunnar Myrdal records in Asian Drama — An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, a peerless study of the South Asia of the 1960s, how Pakistani diplomats had an edge over their Indian counterparts in conviviality and social graces, given the right occasion. But for Ziaul Haq’s divine intervention the equation might have remained in Pakistan’s favour, though to no great advantage to its hapless masses.
There was a time up to the 1960s when tourist pictures from Pakistan on the 3D Viewfinder showed Pakistanis dodging around in their Toyotas when Indians were happily lumbering on in their very basic Landmasters, a forerunner to the Ambassador. A class of women flaunted jeans and goggles when their Indian counterparts still donned old-fashioned baggy shalwars.
Khushwant Singh wrote of the Lahore match during the revived cricketing ties with India in 2004 when beautifully attired Pakistani women thronged Gaddafi Stadium. There was only one woman in a burqa and she was the mother of an Indian player, Khushwant Singh observed. To make up for the lapse, if it was that, the Indians have mustered up skimpily clad women as cheerleaders for their cricket matches. The women are mostly foreigners in case the village elders are watching.
We all have learned, however, that cultural percolation from above has not worked in Pakistan just as its economic variant — the neo-liberal school of top-down development — has failed miserably. The idea that well-meaning men and women with borrowed liberal motifs could become the trendsetters for the masses, comprising mostly illiterate men and women, has recoiled hard.
If there was any hope for a modest advance it was snuffed out with an official push for religion to pervade all spheres of life. India is following that roadmap to disaster. Instances where villagers have defied the state to issue Taliban-like edicts against women — what they wear and who they marry, etc — have increased. Urban zealots driven by religion — Hindu or Muslim — have not resisted the temptation to use RDX to stress their point.
And now Anna Hazare’s men see similarities between Messrs Asif Ali Zardari and Pranab Mukherjee. Just as we watched Mukherjee being sworn in as India’s new president, with all its perks, including constitutional immunities against criminal investigation, not to speak of prosecution, Hazare’s team delivered a simultaneous demarche, launching an indefinite fast to expose as-yet unspecified corruption involving the new resident of the British-built Presidential Palace.
Allegations about probity apart, there is not much more in common between Mr Zardari and Mr Mukherjee. One is a political head of his country who has given top priority to peace dialogue with India, the other holds a largely ceremonial post and was not known in his political avatar to push for anything except what helped India’s big business.
It must be this terse image of Mr Mukherjee that prompted the terrorist Omar Sheikh to ring up President Zardari from his prison cell pretending to be the Indian foreign minister. The security alert that followed happened because Pakistanis don’t seem to trust India as a responsible neighbour. If anything, they are likely to see it more as a spitting image of themselves, increasingly so.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
No matter what jawed naqavi writes about,he has to end up comparing india with pakistan and then try to show how pakistan is better off.Mr naqavi is a indian muslim, writing article after article criticizing india yet he will never consider a option of moving toa better place.I was in amritsar about two months ago, where about 35- 40 hindus from sindh and some sikhs from peshawar were protesting in front of Deputy commissioners office for permanent residency in india.This is what is happening in 2012.
I traveled extensively through Pakistan in the late 70s and remember it to be a conservative and provincial society. Women were harassed by men in most cities if they were not dressed modestly or if they looked foreign. As a light skinned Afghan with brown hair I remember people asking me if I was European, the ignorance was unfathomable. I did not see women clad in jeans sporting goggles anywhere in public. Maybe Javed Naqvi is speaking of an elite group of people dressing in western clothes in their private lives not public.
I traveled through Pakistan in the late 70s and I never saw a woman clad in jeans and over sized glasses.
Consumerism basically is the blood line of trade and business but it has to be kept within a limit.
"LOOKING at it dispassionately, it is evident that middle-class Indians have acquired many reckless and jarring values from Pakistan."
As far as 'mindless consumerism' is concerned — both India and Pakistan got it from the United States.
But if you a little deeper the mindless is not that mindless — the economy of the United States depends upon it — can one say the same for India and Pakistan?
Great observations, JN. So instead of learning lessons from the same they are repeating the same mistakes. It appears that in reality you are writing in favour of India not against.
India is a great nation. And rightly so. India did good things and it progressed well. it should not repeat same mistakes that are proven to go nose dive, as Pakistan is doing right now.
Here's one area where Pakistan is painfully different from India:
.
Religious minorities can largely practice their religion peacefully in India. That is not at all the case in Islamic Pakistan
where blasphemy laws are used regularly to terrorize nonmuslims and keep them in Dhimmitude.
Too bad you never address that issue do you, Mr Naqvi?
I for one find his remarks beyond rational thinking, and fair. As to his motives in trying to assert that India, for all its faults has the same range of issues as Pakistan, I have no idea but I for one do no not take him seriously any longer. But reading his biased and under-researched articles that would do do justice to the old regimes of the Soviet union is comic pleasure, no more.
Javedbhai, please go out.
Mr Naqvi, India can not be compared to Pakistan politically,economically and otherwise.India was founded on basis of Modern, liberal outlook while Pakistan on religious basis,regime change was done through bullet in Pakistan while ballot was used in India,due to foresightedness of Manmohan Singh Indian Industry are expanding in foreign land and Indian Corporate Management skill is being used in acquiring well known Foreign companies(eg;Mr Laxmi Mittal is biggest steel producer of World similarly Tata(Jaguar), Birla,Public Sector Co are following the trend-no Pakistan company has that World standing.Educationally Indian IT and other knowledge based skill is dominating the world over -Pakistani are lagging far behind.In recent times in Sports also Indian Cricket was world#1 in test cricket,T-20 Champion and World Cup Champion ,Pakistan does not have this honor in past decade.Regarding Women -girl schools are being bombed in Pakistan while Indian women are leading International companies(Indra Noyee),going to space and dominating on World Beauty Contest.
Naqvi Mian..
Despite your repeated attempts to equate Pakistan/Muslims with Indians/Hindus..ground realities prove otherwise. It must be killing you to see your beloved land of the pure now reduced to existing on western alms, its citizenry now killing the less pious moslems after wiping out the Hindu population…
The Indian muslims may cry and moan…but compared to Pakistani Hindus…well I am too embarrassed to even make that comparison…Yeah yeah..Gujarat….That is waht will happen if Moslems burn trains carrying Hindu women and childre,,, No apologies for that
India is simply Pakistan times five.
Mr. Naqvi, You are correct about the trend in India of "Consumerism" and the fact that India lagged behind Pakistan for decades in this consumerism. I also agree that Jeans clad women were first to be seen in Pakistan. But the difference ends here.
Pakistan indulged in consumerism on borrowed money and is till borrowing, while India tightened it's belts (made a few mistakes) and have earned so that they can indulge.
Further if readers were to take your last paragraph seriously which I reproduce:
"It must be this terse image of Mr Mukherjee that prompted the terrorist Omar Sheikh to ring up President Zardari from his prison cell pretending to be the Indian foreign minister"
then Pakistan rather the world has a lot to worry about. A terrorist calling the president of the country from his cell-phone sitting in a prison can either be construed as total security failure or …………….. You know what I mean!
i am astonished to see so many indians commenting,,,,,,,,,,,rather 90% who r commenting and reading the pakistani news paper are indians,,,,,,,,,which proves the point of indians following pakistani foot steps.