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A brilliant book on Pakistan
(This is a cross-post from Shri L K Advani’s blog. PTH editors do not agree with all of the content but appreciate the concern and some of the insights contained in the excerpts of Mr. M J Akbar’s book. To the childish contention that Salmaan Taseer would be alive today had he been an Indian, we say yes provided that he was not in Gujurat and similarly that Indira and Rajiv Gandhi would be alive today if they were not Indian.)
In the past three decades I have attended numerous book release functions. In my preamble to the comments I have been making on the book to be launched I have often remarked that during the nineteen months of the infamous Emergency (1975-77) which I spent mainly in the Bangalore Central Jail, and briefly in the Rohtak Jail, the one word that used to bring great cheer to all the political prisoners behind bars was the word ‘release’. So, since my own release on 18th January, 1977 – arrest was on 26th June 1975 – whenever I have been approached by an author with the request to ‘release’ his book, I have rarely disappointed him.
One of the most impressive book release functions I have participated in was a couple of months back when Vice President Hamid Ansari launched M.J. Akbar’s TINDERBOX. The book has been subtitled ‘The Past and Future of Pakistan’. Hon’ble Ansari himself described the book as ‘Vintage M.J. Akbar’ – a compliment as much for the book as for its author. The book is a brilliant analysis of not only what motivated the creation of the unnatural state that is Pakistan, but what ails it now that makes it what M.J. calls a ‘jelly state’. Akbar adds “….neither will it achieve stability, nor disintegrate. Its large arsenal of nuclear weapons makes it a toxic jelly in a region that seems condemned to sectarian, fratricidal and international wars. The thought is not comforting”
A very distinguished gathering of eminent scholars and celebrities were present at the book launching held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Akbar’s book was released on a day when a ghastly tragedy occurred in Pakistan. Salman Taseer, Governor of Pakistan’s most populous State, Punjab, was assassinated by a member of his personal security detail, by name Malik Mumtaz Qadri. Taseer invited the fanatic’s ire because of his outspoken defence of a Christian Woman Aasia Bibi currently facing the death penalty on charges of blasphemy. Taseer had been boldly advocating repeal of blasphemy laws.
* * *
In his Introduction to the book, Akbar writes :
“Muslims of British India had opted for a separate homeland in 1947, destroying the possibility of a secular India in which Hindus and Muslims would coexist, because they believed that they would be physically safe, and their religion secure, in a new nation called Pakistan. Instead, within six decades, Pakistan had become one of the most violent nations on earth, not because Hindus were killing Muslims, but because Muslims were killing Muslims”.
It was against the background of this conviction of his that the most significant remark he made in his short speech that day was: “If Salman Taseer had been in India, he would not have died !”
The content of MJs book was such that all those who spoke that day – besides the Chief Guest Hamid Ansari, Publishers Harper Collins Chairman Arun Purie and Finance Minister Pranab Mukerji kept bringing up some or other contrasting characteristic of India and Pakistan which explained their present conditions and success or failure.
Asked to say a few words on the occasion, I recounted a brief conversation I had with some leading politicians during my last visit to Pakistan in 2005. At a reception hosted by India’s High Commissioner in Pakistan at the time, the Centre Table had seats for the High Commissioner and for me and besides representatives of all political parties and three or four Ministers. A question posed to me very pointedly by several of the politicians was: Mr. Advani, you are a Sindhi born and brought up for the first twenty years of your life in Karachi. Today, you have risen in India’s politics to become the Deputy Prime Minister of India! Did not your origin, your birth etc. become an obstacle in your political career ? My reply was: Not at all. In Indian politics, all those who migrated from Sind, N.W.F.P., Punjab, East Bengal etc. to Rajasthan, U.P., West Bengal etc. and decided to become active in politics joined the Congress, Jana Sangh, Socialist Party, Communist Party etc. and became part of the political mainstream. It is really for you to ponder why Muslims from U.P., Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar etc. who have come to Pakistan have remained muhajirs (refugees) even after over fifty years and have had to form a separate party MQM !
India’s ethos, I told them, has always been ‘assimilative’, whereas Pakistan’s ethos has been ‘exclusivist.’!
Indeed, Tinderbox repeatedly emphasizes that Shah Waliullah, the premier Sunni theologian and intellectual of his age, proposed “a theory of distance and the protection of ‘Islamic purity’ as his prescription for a community that was threatened by the cultural power and military might of the infidel.”
This book makes this perceptive observation :
“The debate in Pakistan, about the role of Islam in its polity, began while Jinnah was still alive. The father of Pakistan was challenged by the godfather of Pakistan, Maulana Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and accurately described as the architect of the Islamist movement in South Asia and the most powerful influence on its development worldwide. Islamism did not, and does not, have much popular support in Pakistan, as elections prove whenever they are held; but its impact on legislation and political life is far stronger than a thin support base would justify. Maududi’s disciple, General Zia ul Haq, who ruled Pakistan from 1976 with an autocratic fist for a decade, crippled liberals with a neat question: if Pakistan had not been created for Islam, what was it, just a second-rate India?”
Akbar’s concluding comment in his Introduction is :
“”Pakistan can become a stable, modern nation, but only if the children of the father of Pakistan, Jinnah, can defeat the ideological heirs of the godfather, Maududi.”
* * *
Akbar’s book carries an extraordinary letter written by Shivaji to Aurangzeb which I had never come across before. It would be worth reproducing it. Akbar says :
Shivaji, the charismatic Maratha ruler whose challenge to Mughal suzerainty has often been cited as a principal cause for their decline, wrote an extraordinary letter to Aurangzeb protesting against jiziya: ‘If you believe in the true Divine Book and the Word of God (the Quran), you will find there Rabb-ul-Alamin, the Lord of all men, and not Rabb-ul-Muslimin, the Lord of the Muslims only. Islam and Hinduism are terms of contrast. They are (diverse pigments) used by the true Divine Painter for blending the colours and filling in the outlines; If it be a mosque, the call to prayer is chanted in remembrance of him. If it be a temple, the bell is rung in yearning for Him only. To show bigotry for any man’s own creed and practices is equivalent to altering the words of the Holy Book…’ It was this philosophy, noted Shivaji, which had impelled Akbar towards sulh-i-kul and prevented Jahangir and Shah Jehan from alienating Hindus. ‘They too,’ wrote Shivaji, ‘had the power of levying jiziya, but they did not give place to bigotry in their hearts.’
L.K. Advani
New Delhi
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: Indian, Maududi, nation, Pakistan
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First!
wait a minute – you are quoting from L K Advani?… LOL – Advani is now the intellectual giant for pakis to emulate and quote from? Ha ha…
Major – majboori ka naam mahatma gandhi [or Lal Kishen Advani ] hai.
“”Pakistan can become a stable, modern nation, but only if the children of the father of Pakistan, Jinnah, can defeat the ideological heirs of the godfather, Maududi.”
But sir, who gave the ideological push to such great Divine priniciple of levying jaziya ? Kuran or Muahmamd of Arabia ?
When one of Shivaji Generals kidnapped the wife of a Moghul Noble as retaliation for religiously sanctioned molestation of captive Hindu women , he chided him and sent the woman back with gifts . The contrast in charachter is so obvious with the incident of bedding Safiya on the very night her family was toturd and killed . True to Indic prinicple , Shiva ji addressed the right hand possesed Muslaman woman with Motherly title as degrading thought of sexual exploitaton was completely absent from his mind. He was mere mortal human and not a Prophetical charachter . My guess is LKA has no such recollection of Shivaji as he ignores the ideological mindset of Pakistanis who are the only perfect symbol of Islam in full glory in all walks of life.
“To the childish contention that Salmaan Taseer would be alive today had he been an Indian, we say yes provided that he was not in Gujurat and similarly that Indira and Rajiv Gandhi would be alive today if they were not Indian.”
This is absurdity at its highest. The 2002 incident in Gujarat though highly regrettable and condemnable in no way represent the situation in Pakistan. Where do you see the polarization of India society along communal/sectarian lines today? Clearly to me the Babri demolition subsequent Bombay riots and the 2002 Gujarat incidents have in some sense matured the Indians and made the nation stronger as is evident by the lack of any untoward communal incident after the High Court verdict on Babri Mosque. As is evident by the democratic elections in Bihar (one of the most communal states in the previous decade), people today vote for peace and development.
The difference in communal/sectarian elements in India and Pakistan is that while in India they are at fringe in Pakistan they are very much mainstream.
Referring Indira and Rajiv is absurd and out of context. It is like Zia wouldn’t have died in a plane crash and Bhutto wouldn’t be hanged if they were in India. Indira was murdered because of Operation Blue Star which was to curb separatism in Punjab and Rajiv was murdered because of the policies in Sri Lanka. What sense does it make to even refer them here?
And yes, Salman Taseer would definitely have been alive in India.
More Muslims have died in Pakistan is sectarian violence alone in the last 5 years than in the whole of Indian history in communal clashes.
Arguing with pakistani liberals in some blog?
What use will it be?
They still have found no answer to Zia’s neat question.
“…. if Pakistan had not been created for Islam, what was it, just a second-rate India?”
Even Jinnah would not be able to answer this question today, in 2011, (whatever polit-religio-acrobatics he may have “successfully” done in 1940-48).
Dishonesty compels new dishonesties. It is an unending chain and Pakistan and islam are caught up in it eternally.
Irfan Ahmad, in “Islamism and Democracy in India”, narrates:
In Pakistan he [Maududi] opposed the League leaders because they were also trying to establish an “infidelic system [kafirana nizam]“, the only difference being that it would be presided over “by an Abdullah [meaning a Muslim] rather than a Ram Prasad [meaning a Hindu]“. In India the Jamaat interpreted Maududi’s words to mean that even Hindus could run an Islamic state if it were based on the principles of submission to God, humanism and the sovereignty of God.
In the 1960s, Syed Hamid Husain (1920-1985), a prominent Jamaat[-i-Islami] leader, visited AMU. A scion of a feudal family, Husain, before converting to the Jamaat, was a Communist, was Westernized, and was an avid filmgoer. Under the Jamaat’s influence, he resigned from his job with the British Army, considering it haram. Because he had a Western education, the Jamaat regarded him as its star preacher for AMU. In his lectures to students, Husain attacked secularism, nationalism, and democracy, presenting Islam as an alternative system based on submission to God, humanism and the sovereignity of God. Describing Husain’s alternative as “foolish” and “reactionary”, an agitated student asked Husain how an Islamic system was possible in India. Intizar, a retired AMU professor who was a student at the time and attending the lecture, told me that Husain replied, “Yes, it is [possible]. If Hindus accepted the three Islamic principles, India could become an Islamic system.” When asked if he meant that Hindus had to convert to Islam, he answered no. At that, Intizar and his friends laughed at Husain’s “foolishness” [be-vaqufi] and “irrationality” [pagalpan].
Akbar’s book is not much about Pakistan. Only in the last three chapters does it attend to Pakistan proper. Most of the book is familiar material about the evolution of Muslim political thought from Shah Waliullah to Jinnah already covered by other authors and much discussed on PTH. Though he writes well I was disappointed by its lack of new insights. The name is probably chosen to lure buyers; there is only a cursory examination of why Pakistan is a tinderbox.
And of course it ends with excerpts from that discredited interview of Maulana Azad reported by Agha Shorish Kashmiri.
Told to me by an Indian in Dubai, his convo with a Pakistani ?
Pakistani; What Muslim are you?
Indian; Err….Malayalee Muslim?
Pakistani: I asked are you Sunni ?
Indian; Yes.
Pakistani; Deobandi or Barelvi!
Indian; Malabari!
Pakistani: (confused now); Now what is that?
Indian; 2500 miles south to Bareli, near the coast of Arabian Sea, you BOZO! Are we talking religion or geography?
Pakistani; I think i should better leave.
Indian: Thanks.
Indian society is assimliative, Pakistani society is exclusivist, do not blame Islam or applaud other religion. it is the logical construct of a society.
[...] A brilliant book on Pakistan [...]
Amarbhai,
Arguing with pakistani liberals in some blog? What use will it be?
You have hit bulls eye. Question is then why you hang around here with Paki liberals and their Indian 4M chamchas.
Regards
I have read Akbar’s book. He really writes more about the history of Islam in the Indian subcontinent from the time the first Islamic ruler invaded India till the time India was partitioned. Very little is actually about Pakistan. Guess the book had Pakistan in its title just to grab attention. It should have been titled “Islam and muslim philosophies in India from 1000 AD to 1947″ or something like that. It was a good book, but slightly boring.
And there is nothing about the present or future of Pakistan.
I beleive Pakistan and India left many questions unanswered at the time of their creation . Both nations suffer from an identity crisis and not much can be done about it now. Only time will tell as to how they will shape up!