Looking back and forth

DAWN (Editorial)

NOT counting Muhammad bin Qasim's incursion into Sindh, it has been a thousand years since Muslim warrior-kings emerging from Afghanistan swept down on the subcontinent and established their first footholds in northern India. On the foundations thus laid there arose a succession of Muslim dynasties which ruled most of northern India for full seven hundred years. The greatest of these were the Mughals under whom Muslim rule in India reached its highest point. But then started the long decline which saw the Mughal empire breaking up, the Marathas rising in the south-west, the Sikhs in the north and the British securing themselves in Bengal. Through this period while Muslim achievements were dazzling in many respects, they were also unidimensional. Great changes were taking place in Europe with the Renaissance giving birth to a new consciousness. Under its impact men's minds were freed from the dogmatism of the Dark Ages. The torch of learning, first lit by the Greeks and then held for hundreds of years by Islamic scholars, was now in other hands. India remained ignorant of these momentous advances, the greatest Muslim contributions in the subcontinent being in administration, architecture and mediaeval warfare. It was thus almost inevitable that when the colonizing impulse arrived on Indian shores, India would be helpless before it.

While Europeans first came as traders, their minds were soon seized by dreams of conquest. Once the British had established themselves in Bengal (after first worsting the French in south India) their progress towards the north and the north-west was inexorable. One principality after another fell to them although in praise of the British it must be said that they grasped the fruit when it was ripe to fall. This was the first invasion of India from the sea. All others, from that of the Aryans down to the Muslims, had come from the north-west. This invasion, while spanning a relatively short historical period, left an enduring impact behind. Much of the surface uniformity to be seen among the successor states of the British Indian empire - laws, government, railways, the ascendancy of the English language, etc - is a legacy of the Raj. But much was left untouched and unaltered, the most important of this being the irreconcilable differences between the two principal races of India: Hindu and Muslim.

India down the ages was a great absorber of external influences. Conquering races came and became one with the timeless reality of India. Muslims alone remained impervious to this trend, retaining their distinct identity and also spreading their faith among other races. Throughout British rule these differences not only remained sharp but, as political consciousness grew and brought with it the first urge for freedom, became accentuated. It is a myth propagated by Indian historians and publicists that the British fanned Hindu-Muslim differences in pursuit of a policy of divide and rule. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Nirad Chaudhuri, one of the most perceptive recorders of the British impact on India, says, "When I see the gigantic catastrophe of Hindu-Muslim discord...I am not surprised because we as children held the tiny mustard seed in our hands and sowed it very diligently." The time he was writing of were the early years of the 19th century.

In the first half of the 18th century a new Hindu consciousness (exemplified by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others who followed in his footsteps) developed in Bengal, then the most advanced outpost of learning in British India. This had its counterpart some years later in the Aligarh movement which sought to pull the Muslims out of their listless state of nostalgia and expose them to the new realities sweeping India. Thus were planted the first seedlings of a new Muslim nationalism which was as much the natural outgrowth of an identity and a consciousness which had been around for a thousand years as it was a response to the revivalist overtones of Hindu nationalism. By the beginning of the 19th century the battle lines were being firmly drawn. Congress, the vehicle of Hindu nationalism, professed an eclecticism and catholicity which it did not possess. No sooner had its surface been scratched than its essence was revealed. The Muslim League, the platform of Muslim nationalism, was more uncomplicated in its aims. It did not want to be swamped by the Hindu majority.

The next 40 years saw this struggle developing and becoming more intense. As the tide of nationalism ebbed and flowed across British India, Muslim nationalism also became sharper, its most perceptive and articulate spokesman being Iqbal, its most effective champion, Jinnah. To those from both sides of the communal divide closely engaged in the struggle, and therefore not able to look at things from a distance, it might occasionally have seemed as if the unity of India could have been preserved through the passions of the freedom struggle. Standing 50 odd years later at the dawn of a new millennium it is clear that nothing could have been more futile or unrealistic than that hope. The partition of India was inevitable. Its seeds were laid not in the first years of the 19th century but indeed when, at the dawn of the last millennium, the first Muslims rode into India and made it their home.

But if this is the turbulent history of the subcontinent, it does not mean its future should be fraught with dangers of frictions and conflicts. No country can choose its neighbours; neither can India and Pakistan. Since the traumatic events of partition their relationship has been marked by unremitting hostility which more than once has degenerated into open war. Both countries have to show greater wisdom if they are to turn some of their swords into ploughshares. But for this to happen both countries have to respect each other's existence and make some headway with resolving the unfinished business of partition: the dispute over Kashmir. Without this ancient memories will keep being rekindled.

How is the next millennium likely to treat Pakistan? Its history has been a mixed one with its share of joys and sorrows. While Pakistanis tend to be their own severest critics, the country has scored some notable successes. On tenuous foundations (the belief in India at the time of partition being that Pakistan would not last very long) a strong country has been raised. Living standards have gone up, much development has taken place. But, to be honest, some of the hopes accompanying the birth of the new nation have not been realized. Many countries with less advantages than those Pakistan enjoyed in 1947 have forged ahead. Pakistan is mired in many difficulties. The bulk of its people remain uneducated. Health cover is poor. The state consumes too much and produces too little. Too much revenue goes towards debt servicing and defence leaving too little for the social sector. The debt trap is getting deeper by the day.

Even so, the cynicism of the chattering classes notwithstanding, the majority of Pakistanis remain hopeful that, given the right leadership, the country's path can be kept straight and its destiny, admittedly wayward over the years, turned around. The country's leaders have indeed failed Pakistan. While dictatorship has often reared its ugly head and left problems in its wake, the record of Pakistani democracy has not been much better - democracy in its fitful progress raising imposing monuments to greed, corruption and shortsightedness of the worst kind. Thus it is that Pakistan enters the new millennium with cautious step, another democratic government (which really made a mockery of its mandate) having been overthrown and another military government trying to clean the stables and prepare the ground for the restoration of democracy.

The people of Pakistan have been here before and heard similar noises in the past. If all this sounds gloomy, it fails to take into account the natural ebullience, resilience and hardihood of the Pakistani people whose belief is not to be shaken that given the right stimulus (leadership again entering into the calculation here) and the right environment, there is no obstacle in the world that can keep them from racing ahead and realizing their enormous potential.