[chottala.com] A visit to Pakistan by Ishtiaq Ahmed

A visit to Pakistan

By Ishtiaq Ahmed   [The author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore, on leave from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. ] Between October 27 and November 7, I happened to be in Pakistan mainly to attend a conference and to collect material for my latest research. The Institute of Public Research Islamabad (IPRI) and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm (ISDP) had jointly organised a most timely conference on, The Role of Religious Communities in Pakistan. It must be said to the full credit of the organisers that they invited the best Pakistani experts on the different religious communities in Pakistan. It was a very enlightening to learn from the experts about the diverse standpoints and concerns of the various religious communities and sects in Pakistan. Professor Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, who chaired the conference, encouraged all of us to speak our mind honestly and fearlessly. That put us at great ease and, therefore, some very frank exchange of views took place. The conference epitomised the two competing viewpoints that pervade discussions on the relationship between the state and religion in all Pakistani fora: the one that hold that Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be a democratic, secular state while others who are emphatic that he wanted to create an ideal Islamic state based on the Shariah. In a future article on this controversy, I shall try to make sense of these conflicting interpretations of Jinnah's legacy. My own input was to provide a comparative-historical perspective of the relationship between religion and politics in the European and South Asian contexts. The thesis I advanced was that, contrary to popular perception, religion and state were intimately connected in Europe until as late as the Second World War. The secular, universal democracy that exists there now dates only from the time of the UN Charter of 1945. On the other hand, in South Asia the state remained the protector of all communities and that pluralist model remained in force until colonialism came to an end in 1947. Even Aurangzeb was a secular ruler in many senses of the word despite his personal inclination towards a doctrinal type of Islam. Amid all these intellectually very stimulating discussions the upbeat mood of the conference suffered a blow on Oct. 30 when we learnt that only some kilometres away from the IPRI premises where we were meeting a suicide bomber had blown himself up and killed several policemen as well as a passing cyclist. On Thursday, November 1, another suicide bomber blew himself up and nine men of the Pakistan Air Force at Sargodha. Many others were badly injured. It would be very interesting to call a conference just to discuss what makes a suicide bomber offer himself/herself for death and kill other innocent people too. Do such people notice that those who recruit them and indoctrinate them never themselves go on such missions or send their own children to such a gory fate? Is it poverty and illiteracy of the recruits or their psychological infirmity, which makes them not question their mentors, or a combination of all these factors that explains why he offers his life? One would really like to have more scientific and theoretical knowledge on this subject. It seems that any religious text can be used to indoctrinate potential suicide bombers. It all began with the Tamil Tigers using this technique in the conflict against the Sri Lankan state. Professor Peter Schalk at Uppsala University, Sweden has shown that the Tamil Tigers used the Mahabharta Epic to instill among the Tamil youths the spirit of self-sacrifice for the honour of the nation. This technique seems to have been learnt by Islamist groups too. The second reason for coming to Pakistan was to establish contacts with scholars and experts who could help me in my latest research project aiming to understand the nature of the American influence on Pakistan, especially on the Pakistani armed forces. There are several books available on the history of the Pakistan Army. Ahmad Faruqui has made a study of the Pakistani security paradigm in his pioneering work, rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. The concept of 'Milibus' has been advanced by Dr Ayesha Siddiqa to shed politico-economic light on this problem, while Mazhar Aziz has evolved the notion of a parallel state. I am inclined to employ the notion of a garrison state suggested by Harold Lasswell in 1941 to distinguish states ruled by the military from those ruled by civilians. Such states base their existence on the real or imagined security threats from internal as well as external enemies. Tan Tai Yong has so fruitfully employed that concept to analyse the evolution of the British Indian Army and especially its role in the Punjab. I intend to find out what role the US has played in the consolidation of the garrison state in Pakistan. In this connection, I interviewed the former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg and the former head of the ISI, General Asad Durrani, in Islamabad. The next day I left for Lahore in the hope of talking to other retired senior army officers, but the imposition of the emergency on November 2 meant that the interviews had to be suspended till normal times in the future. As always, Lahore is the place that I love most but it is also the one where I almost always get a sore throat or bronchial trouble because pollution levels in that great city are really far beyond what human beings should be exposed to. Unfortunately things will go bad even more before they are ever corrected. Delhi used to be highly polluted by now its air has improved dramatically. In one of the bethaks (evening sittings) comprising my progressive comrades past events and people who once lived in Lahore and were now gone were recalled. We became more and more sentimental as the evening grew older. My own position is a peculiar one. I come for a few days and then slip into oblivion for long periods of time. I do hope destiny has in store some more visits to Lahore for me. I can't think of any other place like I feel about Lahore. On the whole the trip to Pakistan was very useful in academic terms in that people have not given up hoping for a different and better Pakistan. The Pakistani press remains vigilant and strong despite restrictions that have been imposed on television channels and other sources of independent information and news. Police repression at the Lahore High Court on Monday, November 5, and other such events saddened me considerably. The author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore, on leave from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Email: isasia@nus.edu.sg Editorial Archive The News International Pakistan

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