General Zia-ul-Haq has paid this country a compliment it does not deserve. For, we cannot in all conscience claim the slightest credit for the present movement for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. In fact, but for a statement by the prime minister, Mrs. Gandhi, extending support to the cause of democracy in the neighbouring country, we would have had good reason to hang our heads in shame.
While General Zia has not named India as the foreign power which is allegedly engineering the movement in Pakistan, his cohorts have done it for him. But neither he nor they can be so dim-witted as to believe this to be the case. The general has made the charge in order to avoid so grave an embarrassment. After all, he cannot admit that his regime is so unpopular that hundreds of thousands of people are prepared to defy martial law and risk even death in an attempt to overthrow it.
It is difficult to say whether General Zia himself has been master-minding Pakistan’s approach towards this country, or whether someone else in Islamabad or even Washington has been tutoring him. But there cannot be much doubt that the architect (or architects) of this policy possesses (or possess) a keen understanding of the mood of the Indian elite. This elite is desperate to call it a day, go home and relax. It has no understanding of the deeper sources of the conflict with Pakistan, no desire to assert the preeminence that belongs to India by virtue of its size, resources and potentialities and no interest in what goes on in Pakistan.
This would, on the face of it, appear to be a harsh judgment. But it is not. By and large the Indian elite was willing to endorse a tough line towards the ruling junta in Pakistan only so long as it was frightened of its military prowess. This fear disappeared in 1971 when Pakistan broke into two. Since then it has been more than willing to bury the hatchet and at the same time turn its back on developments in Pakistan.
Backing To army Men
The Pakistani rulers, mostly military men, in fact when not in name, have always had supporters in this country. While some of these individuals have been cold warriors and have sided with Rawalpindi (and Islamabad) because it has been America’s “most loyal ally” in Asia, others have managed to convince themselves that the psychology that lay behind the creations of Pakistan had disappeared. But be that as it may, the number of “Friends of Pakistan” was rather limited up to 1971. Since then it has become difficult to count them.
Obviously complex factors are at work. One of these is a genuine fondness in much of India for what may be called Muslim culture. Since the Hindus have not had a court culture of their own, many of them are fascinated by the Moghul court culture and what permeated of it among upper class Muslims. This would explain the popularity of films on Indian Muslim “history” (read fiction) and society. A kind of inferiority complex is in evidence. Then there are the “refugees” among us, some of whom have a nostalgia for the land of their birth. But the attitude has essentially been one of escapism – escape at once from the burden which history, with a prod first from the British (divide and rule) and then from the Americans (anti-communism plus pax Americana), has cast on the Indian elite and from the unhappiness that imposition of martial law on the Pakistan people again and again, must produce.
There is, of course, an apparent contradiction in this proposition. “Friends of Pakistan” cannot logically be indifferent to the fate of the people there. But facts speak for themselves. It is difficult to name a single Indian who has advocated friendly relations with the government in Islamabad and has at the same shown the slightest interest in the establishment (or restoration if you please) of democratic institutions in that country. It may not be quite fair to recall that one of the tallest and noblest among them, Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan, had even endorsed Field-Marshal Ayub Khan’s basic democracy to the great disappointment of the Pakistani intelligentsia. But the example is perhaps pertinent because it is representative of the attitude of “Friends of Pakistan.” Mr. Nehru was reluctant to deal with President Ayub Khan because the latter was a military dictator. Mrs. Gandhi may have had similar inhibitions in respect of General Zia. But that is a very different issue.
Pressure On PM
We are, of course, not our brothers’ keepers. We cannot ensure democracy in Pakistan however much we may wish it to prosper there. Democracy, unlike dictatorships of varying varieties, cannot be exported or even assisted from outside. But it does not and cannot follow that we should load the dice against those who have been struggling for this civilized form of government. Which is precisely what “friends of Pakistan” have been urging New Delhi to do. They tried to push Mr. Nehru into embracing General Ayub Khan (as he then was) and they have tried to push Mrs. Gandhi into befriending General Zia. So great has in fact been the pressure this time that she would almost certainly have succumbed to it if she was not so tough minded and so perceptive of the long-term national interest.
Any student of international affairs would know that regimes unsure of their position at home seek legitimacy abroad either by trying to befriend a respected government or by trying to wage successful war. General Ayub Khan did precisely that in 1959, a year or so after he had seized power, he offered India a joint defence pact which proposal Mr. Nehru rejected for good reason which it is neither possible for necessary to discuss in this article. In 1965, when he found his position rather shaky, he tried to grab Jammu and Kashmir. In both cases he was seeking to legitimize his rule in the eyes of the Pakistani people. General Zia has clearly been engaged in a similar effort. Like General Ayub Khan, he, too, has not been successful. But one consequence of success would surely have been to strengthen his hold within Pakistan. And yet Indian liberals opposed to the “authoritarian” Mrs. Gandhi have been pressing her to follow a course which would have tipped the scale further in favour of military dictatorship in Islamabad.
There was at least something to be said in favour of General Ayub Khan. He loved the pomp and pageantry that goes with power. But by nature he was not a cruel man. He would not have wanted to wade through the blood of the Pakistani people to keep himself in office. And he was a liberal in the social sense of the term, that is, he was keen to curb the power of the medieval mullahs and put the Pakistani society on the path to modernity. The changes he brought about in the Muslim personal law and the encouragement he gave to educated Pakistani women to assert their natural rights as human beings are a testimony to his modern outlook. Thus in the vital social field, his aspirations for the Pakistani people were not very different from Mr. Nehru’s for his countrymen.
Zia’s Salami Tactics
But what about General Zia? Surely, he is a very different kind of individual. He first attracted attention when as a brigadier on deputation in Jordan he participated in the massacre of Palestinians in the infamous Black September of 1970. In 1977 he overthrew Mr. Bhutto who had hand-picked him for the office of chief of army staff superseding several generals. He then engaged in what can only be called salami tactics. He as it were cut Mr. Bhutto into pieces bit by bit. One cannot even be sure whether the former prime minister died of hanging (judicial murder) or whether he was killed in advance of the hanging. He has been doing the same to the people of Pakistan. He has been employing salami tactics to destroy their self-respect. He calls it Nizam-e-mustafa (Islamic order). But did Hitler not call his order national socialism and Stalin his even communism?
The general has not succeeded. Mr. Bhutto has become a martyr to the cause at once of democracy and of Sindhi nationalism. And the people of Pakistan have vomited out the so-called Islamic order he has been trying, in his own words, to ram down their throats. But that is not the issue under discussion right now. The pertinent point is that “friends of Pakistan” and many other self-styled Indian democrats have been advocating friendship with the odious Zia regime. It might have made some sense if they were men of realpolitik – cynical, hard faced men who a la Kissinger do not care for values. But they are not such individuals. They only suffer from self-hate. How else can one convince oneself that the minorities in Pakistan have been treated better than in India?
While it may be a hateful thing to say but it does seem to me that when Mr. Charan Singh and Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee criticized Mrs. Gandhi last week for having had the temerity to make a statement in favour of the current struggle for democracy in Pakistan, they spoke for a large section of the Indian intelligentsia. It is significant that apart from her own partymen, the secretary-general of the CPI, Mr. C. Rajeshwara Rao, is the only important public figure to have sided with her. Needless to add, he has done so not for specially Indian considerations but for larger considerations of the Soviet-US contest.
It is a frightening situation. It shows how far indifference and apathy have travelled. As the saying goes, there is no crime which cannot be justified in the name of some principle. In this case the name is non-interference. But as the other saying has it, murder will be out however much we may try to cover it up. It is out in our case. We have been unfair to the people of Pakistan and we cannot cover up this fact.
The Times of India, 7 September 1983