“To die for”
A Newsweek column published in the first week of January ‘08 titled “What people will die for” written by one Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim by name, said to be of Indian extraction, and more American than the Americans in his projected perspectives, claims that “Pakistan’s deepest cleavage is not between religious extremism and liberalism, nor even dictatorship and democracy. It is between the country’s various regions.” What is being sponsored here is that “With the end of the battle of ideologies – communism, socialism, liberalism – human beings oldest identities (sub nationality) have moved to the core of politics. It is why people vote and what they will die for”, writes Zakaria. As would, say Californians from New Englanders or Texans from New Yorkers? And are Afro-Americans, Hispanics, Irish-Americans, Americans of German and French extraction, to say nothing of European and Russian Jews, to be excluded from the race?
Then, the call of Pakistanis being ready to die for their core identities is moot given that no research backs the cast, other than the fact most of the riots and demonstrations on Benazir Bhutto’s assassinations having taken place in Sindh. That, too, was but natural given the late and lamented popular national leader – repeat national leader - hailed from that province. Mr Zakaria then goes on to state Sindhis, Pashtuns, Baluch (he somehow left the Indian-Muslim immigrants, who call themselves Mohajirs, out of the equation) demand greater autonomy from the Punjab dominated military hierarchy. True, but greater autonomy from the Centre rather than Punjab, might be closer to the mark. Equally questionable is whether the general public in Pakistan’s smaller provinces have come to the point of where, like the Scots in Britain “would unravel the 1707 Acts of Union that created the United Kingdom”, they might hark back to the pre-Pakistan 1940 Resolution.
No, for people who are alert to the Hindu-Muslim riots that continue to plague India, Pakistan is “to die for”, no matter how bad the press this country receives for its failure to implement democratic reforms. Moreover, there is next to no chance of the civilian quotient combating the rising anarchy coming by way of the Islamic insurgency without the support of the armed forces. In the circumstances a ‘regulated’ democracy, may be the only defence the moderate liberal forces in Pakistan have. Both the Co-Chairman of the Peoples Party, Asif Zardari, and the PML-N’s Shabaz Sharif have acknowledged this of late, and it is likely that there will be accommodation between the army and civil society on Musharraf’s return from his European trip. Hopefully too, he will return with a formula to placate the legal community on the question of an independent judiciary, as it is imperative all hands are brought on deck in this hour of Pakistan’s trial.
