Thinking Aloud

A Nation Unveiled: Pakistan at Seventy-five – The Alcove Publishers

A Nation Unveiled: Pakistan at Seventy-five eBook : Azmi, Razi: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

A Nation Unveiled: Pakistan at Seventy-Five takes a kaleidoscopic, ringside look at the evolution of Pakistani politics and society over the last quarter century. Though the focus is on political developments involving politicians, generals and Islamic zealots, there is no aspect of life that escapes the author’s scrutiny. This book is a collection of contemporaneous commentaries, some of which were written in a lighter vein, some in exasperation, but all were intended as serious critique and food for thought. An introduction provides a historical overview of the country’s founding and evolution since 1947. Azmi takes a poignant look at the human and social costs of Partition and its enduring consequences, which have poisoned Pakistan-India relations and marginalised religious minorities in three South Asian countries.

What others say about the book

Razi Azmi plies the steel with the precision and compassion of a surgeon, even as he holds strong opinions on Pakistan’s birth and how the country has been governed since it came into being. Anyone looking for a rational argument and lucidity of style should read this book.

– Ejaz Haider, Journalist & Senior Resident Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies and Policy Research, University of Lahore (Pakistan)

Razi Azmi writes about Pakistan with brutal and passionate honesty. This collection of essays, a selection from his newspaper columns starting 1998, holds up the mirror to the many who have contributed to arresting Pakistan’s evolution as a “normal” state – military rulers, politicians, mullahs, even the well-heeled Pakistani diaspora. Written over the last two decades and related to contemporaneous events, the essays have an immediacy to them. The book can be read as an up-to-date history of Pakistan – there’s even a piece on the history of the “Long March” in the country’s politics. In the last decade, Azmi often contrasted Pakistan’s tangle with Islamism with India’s secular policies, but it is depressingly telling that he has had to provide footnotes in the book to add how some things have changed across Pakistan’s eastern border.

 – Nirupama Subramanian, The Indian Express

Razi Azmi’s book is a collection of critical, no-holds-barred commentaries on contemporary Pakistan. They bring forth alternative perspectives on political affairs, views that challenge the mainstream myths and half-truths. The author’s direct style makes the text accessible and engaging. This volume is a useful addition to literature on Pakistan and should interest students and lay readers alike.

 – Raza Rumi, Editor, The Friday Times & Naya Daur Media (Pakistan)

Razi Azmi’s collection of essays not only gives us a unique insight into the last three decades of Pakistan’s history, but they also remind us that history should not be seen as pre-ordained destiny. As a sincere advocate for a secular and democratic Pakistan, his articles point to alternative imaginations and conceptions of a country that has often been seen as doomed to fundamentalism and political instability. In this regard, his book is also a welcome intervention vis-à-vis security-obsessed and reductionist narratives from outside, which often consign Pakistan as a country that needs to be saved, controlled, or ignored. Instead, his is a reflective gaze of the insider, aware of not only the troubles and faults that lie within the nation, but also the immense promise of its people. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to engage with Pakistan beyond the conventional narratives.

– Amit Julka, Department of International Relations, Ashoka University (India)

Now that Manmohan Singh has become the Prime Minister of India**, many on this side of the border are not just proud, but also claiming paternity, so to speak.  A leading columnist of Dawn has expressed his elation that Mr Singh hails from Potohar, while a Jang columnist has countered with the claim, albeit a weak one, that the Indian Prime Minister is a Multani. For a son-of-the-soil to rise to the pinnacle of political success through a free vote in a country of a billion people has justifiably led many a thorough-bred Potohari into a state of excitement.

But Potoharis should mix their pride at the accession of one of their own to the highest executive position in India with a tinge of shame and regret.  One recalls that another former Indian Prime Minister, I K Gujral***, was also from the Potohar belt. It is not as if these two now-eminent Potoharis had chosen to abandon the place of their birth to migrate to India. They were hounded out of the land of their ancestors, forced to leave everything behind them, except memories.  And they were the lucky ones.  The unlucky ones (and their numbers are in the hundreds of thousands) fell to marauding hordes of opportunists, avengers and believers.

It will be said that the carnage happened on both sides. While that is true, the fact is the carnage was solely the result of the partition of the subcontinent, which the Singhs and the Gujrals had not wanted, but which nonetheless happened against their will and mostly at their expense.  Muslims demanded Pakistan and got it, and Hindus and Sikhs were forced to flee their lands in West Punjab in order to save their lives.  Punjab – both east and west – is probably the worst example of ethnic cleansing in the history of the modern world.  The Muslims of East Punjab also suffered greatly in lives lost and lands abandoned, but then they too had wanted and got their Pakistan.  It is quite another matter that their hope for their part of the Punjab to be included in the Islamic republic proved wrong and they suffered as a consequence, many paying with their lives.

The so-called Mohajirs, who were most vociferous in the demand for Pakistan, had the extraordinary privilege of eating the cake and having it too, insofar as most of them, while migrating to Pakistan, left some kith and kin in their ancestral homes in India.  So it became possible for a certain Dr Mahmood Hussain to become a Minister in Pakistan, while his brother Dr Zakir Hussain rose to the position of President of India. 

On the other hand, the Sikhs and Hindus who survived the carnage in West Punjab quite literally had to run for their lives. They were not allowed to leave any trace or retain any links with their ancestral lands, having been evicted unceremoniously, without warning and under pain of death.

One recalls that when I. K. Gujral became the Prime Minister of India some years ago, a Pakistani journalist traveled to Gujral’s native village in Punjab and spoke to some old men there who remembered Gujral’s father and family well. Asked about the elder Gujral, an old-timer reminisced that he was so humane, kind and non-discriminatory in his attitude that one could not tell whether he was a Hindu or a Muslim.

The articles by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed in these pages have brought out many a sad tale emanating from partition.  Many more are embedded in the birth of Bangladesh – which, like Kashmir, is a spillage of the 1947 partition.  While the suffering of the Bangadeshis has been sufficiently highlighted, the tragedy of the so-called Biharis, on account of their loyalty to Pakistan, still beckons a historian.  The “Bihari” side seems to have been totally overlooked, for while success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.  Bangladeshis write their history, as do Pakistanis, while the “Biharis” – not counting those who died in 1971 — have been reduced to non-persons living in a sort of no-man’s land, physically in Bangladesh but officially not quite there, being stateless non-citizens.

The partition of 1947 resulted in the deaths of between half a million to one million people and the largest migration in history, involving 15 million people. And what do we have to show for the effort which extracted this colossal human sacrifice?  More than half of the population of the country whose establishment caused this mayhem rose in open revolt against it and established their own independent state less than 25 years later in 1971. A Muslim population currently equaling its own had to be left behind as a small minority in a Hindu-majority India to reap the whirlwind from its creation.  And God knows how many more will flee or be driven from their homes or die in Kashmir, that “unfinished business” from the partition of 1947.  As for the residual Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the quasi-official “homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent,” it staggers from one crisis to another, regarded by independent observers as a failed state, propped up by little more than prayers, “nuclear bums” and American political, military and financial assistance.

The Pakistan/Muslim factor has engendered Hindutva in India.  The BJP has lost an election, but many have signed Hindutva’s death certificate a trifle too early. The patron of the Afghan Taliban, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, has now been elevated to the position of leader of the opposition in the Pakistani National Assembly, thus becoming its prime minister-in-waiting, to use the idiom of parliamentary democracies.  When the Vishwa Hindu Parishad locks horns with the Islamists-Jihadists of South Asia, which is probable if not certain, how many millions more will fall victims to more madness in the name of religion is anyone’s guess. But the fact that partition deprived the current and a former Prime Minister of India of a place they can truly call home should motivate thinking Pakistanis to reflect on the man-made tragedy of 1947 which continues to cast its tentacles, hydra-like, on a quarter of the world’s population.

*This column was first published on 29 June 2004 in Daily Times, Lahore.

**Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, was born on 26 September 1937 in Gah village in Chakwal District in Potohar region of Punjab in Pakistan (then a part of British India). His family migrated to India after partition.

***Inder Kumar Gujral, a Hindu, was born on 4 December 1919 in the village of Pari Darveza in Jhelum district (also in the Potohar region) of present-day Pakistan. His family also migrated to India after partition. Multan is in the Saraiki region of southern Punjab in present-day Pakistan.

by Razi Azmi

One of the great advantages of democracy is that it resists personality cults.  The two are so mutually incompatible that when personality cult grows, democracy recedes, and vice versa. Durable democratic processes do occasionally produce very popular leaders, but rarely one with a cult following.

One very popular democratic leader was President Franklin D Roosevelt in the United States, who won four consecutive elections (1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944). He died in office in 1945, whereupon congress, in 1947, initiated the 22^nd constitutional amendment restricting a president to two terms.

Despite what their objects claim, personality cults are never spontaneous. They are always carefully cultivated, usually but not necessarily with state patronage. When the state machinery is used to promote the cult of a leader, the results are catastrophic. The worst example in recent history is the cult surrounding the Kim family in North Korea. There are, of course, other lesser cults now doing the rounds: Belarus, Hungary, Russia, Turkey, China, Brazil, the Philippines, etc.

In recent history, millions became sacrificial lambs to feed the extreme cults of Adolf Hitler (Germany), Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union), Mao Zedong (China), Pol Pot (Cambodia), Saddam Hussain (Iraq), and Hafez Al Assad (Syria), to name a few.

Pakistanis have witnessed the rise and fall of a political leader with a cult following limited to a small, regional ethnic minority. Exploiting some genuine grievances of the Urdu-speaking youth of Karachi and Hyderabad, Altaf Hussain used demagoguery and oratory to build a cult following: he was “Quaid, Pir and Aqa”.

Like all cults, his ended disastrously. So did the cult of Velupillai Prabhakaran in Sri Lanka. Both Altaf Hussain and Prabhakaran had united their respective Mohajir and Tamil communities and infused them with a sense of pride and power. But the seemingly powerful edifice they had constructed came crashing down due to the over-centralisation, obstinacy and skulduggery that accompany personality cult and hero-worship.

Pakistan is now in the throes of the cult of Imran Khan, which began to take shape a few years before he became prime minister. His choice of the epithet “Kaptaan” not only harked back to his success as a cricket captain, but also announced him as a potential “captain of the ship of state”. Using colours, banners and songs, exploiting youth and technology, viciously attacking opponents and making deceitful promises, he portrayed himself as a larger than life figure, the messiah who would rid the country of all evils. Thankfully, in Pakistan’s quasi-democratic, hybrid system, he has not been able to harness all the instruments and organs of the state to push his cult.

Across the border in India, the cult of Narendra Modi has grown alarmingly. Far more devious, divisive and destructive than our Kaptaan, aided by very potent symbols (such as Hindutva), a much stronger team and a far larger support base, Modi has overwhelmed India’s strong and resilient constitutional safeguards and system of checks and balances.

Modi prefers many epithets for himself but two are worth mentioning. “Chowkidar” was transient, to whip up anti-Pakistan (and, by implication, anti-Muslim) sentiments for electoral gains by highlighting his defence of India’s territorial and ideological frontiers. “NaMo” is more enduring, being rhythmical, personalized and sounding like a brand name. But I doubt that Modi will be able to totally subdue India’s constitution, institutions, civil society, and its pluralist and secular tradition to enforce his divisive and authoritarian diktat for too long.

But whereas NaMo presently calls all the shots in India, in Pakistan Kaptaan has to contend with a colossus, referred to as “The Establishment” or “State Institution”, which reigns supreme. It tolerates no cult other than its own, although it is facing unprecedented challenges now.

Then there is Donald Trump, the lying, cheating, bullying real estate tycoon who surprised everyone, including himself, by winning the US presidential election in 2016. Beginning with the election campaign and gathering steam with the presidential debates, he began to cultivate a cult following with carefully chosen words, slogans and gestures, as well as plans, promises and objectives. At the centre of it all was “MAGA”, his promise to make America great again.

Explicitly mentioned were the southern wall to keep messy immigrants out and a tariff wall to keep jobs in. But implicit and between the lines were xenophobia, loathing for Muslims, aversion for blacks and Hispanics and promotion of a white supremacist agenda harking back to the days when blacks were kept in their place and non-white immigrants kept a low profile. Although the American democratic system and tradition had the better of him, he remains a lurking danger.

Of the three personality cults mentioned above, I believe that Trump’s is the most potent for two reasons: firstly, he delivered on some of his promises, such as jobs, and many of the issues he raised were real. He boldly confronted China, which is known to take unfair advantage of lax American rules, he called out Europe and Japan for paying far less than their fair share of the costs of defence alliances and United Nations, and he highlighted the economic, social and demographic consequences of unregulated immigrant influx.

If the issues Trump represents are not taken seriously, there is imminent danger for the United States, for he has a huge following among ordinary Americans and a cult-like status for many, who are armed and spoiling for a fight to the finish.

Modi, to the disappointment of many of his followers, has so far failed to deliver on any of the promises that really matter. The economy is in a mess, largely due to his own reckless policies, China has inflicted a humiliating defeat in Aksai Chin in response to his bluster, Pakistan has not been browbeaten, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Dalits are alienated and the whole country is in turmoil.

But Modi has whipped up so many Hindus into such a frenzy that it will be impossible in future for Indian Muslims to feel like equal citizens of the country. Even after a post-Modi reset, India will be an Israeli-style democracy where non-Jewish Arab citizens, 20% of the population, have constitutional safeguards, but are practically relegated to the status of second-class citizens.

Like Israel, which is “Jewish and democratic”, in reality if not in name, India at best will be “Hindu and democratic”. Even so, it will perhaps be more democratic than the world’s many Muslim-majority countries, where non-Muslim minorities are second class citizens without exception, in practice as well as in theory.

Whereas both Donald Trump and Narendra Modi will leave their mark on the history of their respective countries, Imran Khan will be a mere footnote in the history of Pakistan, remarkable for the incompetent and blundering leadership he delivered, in sharp contrast to the hype and promise of the personality cult he generated and cultivated.

by Razi Azmi

(Daily Times, 14 March 2021)

Liberals are the favourite whipping boy of governments and their loyalists, not only in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh but in all pseudo- and quasi-democracies, autocracies and dictatorships in the world. From Europe (Belarus, Hungary) to Southeast Asia (Myanmar, the Philippines) and from Africa (Uganda, Egypt) to Latin America (Venezuela, Brazil).

But there is a paradox. While these governments and their loyalists detest and denounce the liberals within their own countries, they commend and congratulate the liberals of other countries. For them, in other words, there are good liberals and there are bad liberals.

How do you judge which is which? Pretty easy, from the standpoint of the chest-thumping “patriots” who take their cue from their governments: domestic liberals are bad but foreign liberals are good. But, again, the latter are good only insofar as they champion causes that are dear to these people, such as Kashmir and Palestine, but bad when they criticise the governments of their countries for failure to protect minorities.

Let us begin with Pakistan. Two well-known liberal activists, Pervez Hoodbhoy and the late Asma Jahangir, have been subjected to malicious campaigns by pro-regime elements. These elements, however, admire and cite liberals of India, such as Arundhati Roy and Ravish Kumar, for defending the rights of the people of Kashmir and Indian Muslims, who are under attack from Hindutva forces there.

On the other side of this paradoxical equation, these Hindutva forces in India hate and denounce Roy and Kumar for precisely this very reason, for defending the rights of minorities of their own country. While these two liberals carry on despite threats, Gauri Lankesh was killed a couple of years ago for her activism. At the same time, while killing their own, these forces shamelessly quote and cite Pakistani liberals like Pervez Hoodbhoy and the recently-deceased Irfan Hussain for raising their voices in support of persecuted minorities in Pakistan, including Hindus.

Malala Yusufzai is probably the best known Pakistani liberal who has faced a barrage of criticism and condemnation from right-wing “patriots” in her own country while winning the Nobel Prize for Peace for defending the rights of women to education in Pakistan and everywhere.

The renowned American linguist and philosopher, Noam Chomsky, is much admired in Pakistan by liberals for obvious reasons. But even those who hate Pakistani liberals do not mind quoting him often for his criticism of Israel and support of Palestinian rights as well as his denunciation of US military interventions overseas.

Over three decades ago, I was told of an instance when, in answer to a question at a talk in Islamabad to a large audience, Noam Chomsky revealed that he is a Jew. A pall of silence fell over the audience as most Pakistanis cannot believe that a man who speaks so passionately and persistently about Palestinian rights, besides castigating Israeli expansionism, can be a Jew!

State-controlled Russian, Chinese and Turkish media, as well as their dedicated English-language TV channels (Russia Today, CGTN and TRT World, respectively) profusely quote liberals from Western and other countries on selective international issues. At the same time, these regimes jail dissidents and crush their own liberals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly went so far as to attempt to poison the country’s best-known liberal, namely, Alexei Navalny. A few years earlier, the most prominent Russian liberal leader, Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated not far from the Kremlin. In the weeks before his assassination, he had expressed the fear that Putin might have him killed.

The dictionary meaning of a “liberal” is a person “favourable to progress or reform; free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant.” Liberals of every country demand of their governments to respect fundamental human rights and liberties, uphold the rule of law, guarantee due judicial process and equality before the law, hold transparent, free and fair elections, protect women’s rights and ensure the rights of minorities to full and equal citizenship.

Naturally, then, while Pakistani liberals call for the protection of Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis, their counterparts in India defend the rights of Muslims and of Kashmiris, in Sri Lanka they support the Tamil and Muslim minorities, in Israel the rights of Palestinians and, in the United States, an end to police brutality against blacks.

As I write these lines, an article in Time magazine questions US support for the Narendra Modi government in India (“How Long Will Joe Biden Pretend Narendra Modi’s India Is a Democratic Ally?” 15 Feb 2021):

“The U.S. would like to see India as an ideological and strategic counter to China’s rise, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook India’s fast-declining democratic standards. The daily assaults on civil liberties and the threats to India’s Muslim minority under Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have noticeably increased since Modi’s re-election in 2019. Hate speech is rife, peaceful dissent is criminalized, freedom of expression and association faces new constraints, and the jails are filling up with political prisoners and peaceful dissenters as a servile judiciary looks away.”

These words, coming from an Indian liberal, namely, Debasish Roy Chowdhury, would be very welcome for the pro-establishment forces in Pakistan. And no doubt that these very words would earn Chowdhury the ire of Modi’s government and their Hindutva champions in India. Reflecting this paradox, Indian and Pakistani expatriates in the United States prefer liberal administrations in Washington for ensuring their rights as minorities while condemning liberals in their own countries for doing the same there.

Smear campaigns against non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are carried out and restrictions imposed on their operations in all autocratic, pseudo- and quasi-democratic countries for the same reasons that liberals are condemned, for exposing the failures of these governments from the standpoint of international law and universally accepted human rights standards.

by Razi Azmi

(Daily Times, 20 February 2021)

Surely I am not the only one so enthralled by Imran Khan. He continues to amaze me. Consider his latest discovery: Pakistan’s five-year prime ministerial term is too short. But allow me to go back a bit in time before I return to this subject.

To become prime minister of the country, in terms of actual effort, Imran Khan went to lengths (all corners of the country), heights (standing atop shipping containers) and depths (using foul language) that no one else had before him.

From mobilising the young at the grassroots level to co-opting turncoats from the very parties he denounced, from making alliances with religio-rightist parties to erecting barricades, burning utility bills and invading the parliament. Bold, determined, persistent and focussed, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Before he became prime minister of the country, Imran Khan frequently brandished his strong credentials. One, that he knew how to assemble and lead a winning team. And, two, that he had engaged in political activism for two decades.

To support his first claim, he emphasised his success as cricket captain, particularly in winning the 1992 Cricket World Cup. His second assertion put him in a different class from other politicians in Pakistan. He was in politics not as a family heritage, as is the norm in this country, but because he was passionate about serving the nation.

In the years, months and days leading to the election, our dashing, desperate, aspiring and ready-to-be prime minister constituted and presented his team and published his manifesto. Moreover, he did what was a first in Pakistan, revealing long, medium and short term plans, all backed by figures and charts, to put Pakistan on the path of such progress as to make it the envy of other nations.

Not only did Imran Khan announce milestones and targets, parameters and deadlines, including a 90-day plan of action, but also principles and virtues that would imbibe him and his team.

So when Imran Khan became prime minister, his admirers were ecstatic, for cometh the saviour to rid the country of all evils. The public at large, the silent majority shall we say, was optimistic, for he looked promising, very promising in deed. And his critics were confused and bamboozled, for there was a good chance that he would prove that they were wrong about him all along.

In the event, Imran Khan’s admirers had rejoiced too soon and his critics had worried too early. What followed is one disaster after another worthy of a comedy, were it not for the fact that the fate of over two hundred million people is at stake. Always candid and eloquent, here’s how the prime minister gradually and incrementally explained away his failures.

Within months of taking on the reins of government, Imran Khan declared that there was no shame in making policy “U-turns.” In fact, the courage to make U-turns, when required, was a virtue. He made so many in such a short time that critics began to call them W-turns.

After over two years of heading the government, the prime minister regretted that he had been ushered into the corridors of power without any preparation and training. This, he said, was true not only for him but also for his team. I should point out, however, that a large number, if not a majority, of his ministers had had substantial ministerial experience under one or more of the previous regimes, the ones he condemned as corrupt and shameless. It is also significant that, within his bloated and extended cabinet, it is precisely the most inexperienced and amateurish ones who are closest to him.

And, finally, to borrow a term from cricket as Imran Khan himself prefers, he has achieved a hat-trick by lamenting that the five-yearly election cycle in Pakistan is far too short, preventing the implementation of long-term plans. In truth, the five-year term is the longest in any parliamentary democracy in the world. It is five years in the UK, India and Bangladesh. In Australia, it is three years. American presidents are elected for four years, with a limit of only two terms, giving them a maximum of eight years, subject to re-election.

A Pakistani prime minister, in contrast, can enjoy as many five-year terms as he fancies, provided his party is able to muster a parliamentary majority through elections and he retains the confidence of his party.

In India, Jawaharlal Nehru remained prime minister from independence in 1947 to his death in 1964, winning three consecutive elections. In Australia, John Howard won three continuous three-year terms through elections, losing in his fourth attempt. He was prime minister for nearly twelve years (1996-2007), second only to Robert Menzies who served for 18 non-consecutive years (1939-41, 1949-66). If Nehru is remembered as the founder of the modern Indian state, Menzies and Howard are icons of Australian politics.

Margaret Thatcher in the UK won three consecutive elections and remained prime minister for a little over ten years (1979-90), having had to resign early in her third term after she lost the support of her party.

What Imran Khan is aiming for, however, is nothing of the sort. He wants a long tenure not by winning democratic elections, but rather through some autocratic route. In the context of long and secure tenures, he has specifically mentioned China, disregarding the many factors and characteristics of that country’s one-party, autocratic system, which are totally inconsistent and incompatible with Pakistan’s foundational principles, the vision of its founders and the aspirations of its diverse and multi-ethnic population.

In the past, Imran Khan has also praised the Taliban and the Pakhtun tribal Jirga system of justice, falsely equating it with the jury system. Another favourite of his is the Turkish model of Recep Erdogan, who occupies the country’s highest office since 2003. Secretly, Imran Khan may even envy Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, ensconced in the Kremlin for twenty years and counting.

Lucky are we that our visionary prime minister has not mentioned Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus since 1994. Or, for that matter, Hun Sen of Cambodia or Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, in power since 1985 and 1986, respectively. A nation in the throes of multiple crises, financial, economic, demographic, political, social and ethnic, should be grateful for such small mercies!

by Razi Azmi

(Pubished in Daily Times, 5 February 2021)

The events of the last few days in Washington where, following incitement by the sitting president himself, a hysterical mob besieged, stormed and violently disrupted a session of the Congress, has shamed the vast majority of Americans and embarrassed supporters of democracy around the world. But it has also provided ample raw material to the propaganda factories of dictators, autocrats and pseudo-democrats of all types, of which there are many.

The images beamed from the U.S. Capitol on January 6, however shocking, were over four years in the making. What happened on that day had, by and large, become inevitable after Donald Trump got ensconced in the White House.

Every single day that Donald Trump has been in office, he has damaged America’s democratic institutions and traditions. But he was a disgrace from even before he was ushered into the White House. The leaked video in which he is heard boasting about being able to grope any woman and get away with it because he was a celebrity, should have collapsed his 2016 election campaign instantly. He would be considered as not “fit for public office.”

But it was a sign of the times that Donald Trump got away with that and numerous allegations of sexual assault by women. His misogynistic conduct towards Hillary Clinton during the presidential debates also became acceptable.

Propriety was sacrificed by leaders of the Republican Party at the altar of power and partisan politics. They whose job is to lead, instead became devotees of a thug and bully, fortified by his celebrity status, spurred on by his racist, rampaging admirers. And those who normally occupy the middle ground, the silent majority, also threw basic decency to the winds, laughed off Trump’s obscenities and found fault with Hillary Clinton instead.

No nation in history has been well served by charlatans who pose as heroes and liberators. Countries need leaders, not liberators. It is a sign of imminent danger when pretenders, with charisma or a prior celebrity status, employ demagoguery to build a distorted and false narrative to enter the corridors of power.

Though no two situations are ever identical, historical similarities can throw some light and make us wiser. For we may notice some common features and pointers such as big and repetitive lies, branding of those who think differently as enemies, denouncing political adversaries as traitors, resorting to cheap patriotic and nationalist slogans, arousing a feeling of collective victimhood, etc.

In the United States of Trump, these have been: Latino immigrants, Muslim infiltrators, “Socialist” Democrats, “China Virus”, “build the wall”, “take back our country”, “make America great again”. It is worthwhile mentioning that even Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany through elections, by repeating similar falsehoods and slogans about Jewish conspiracies, appeasement, betrayal and sell-out.

When I look at the rise to power of Narendra Modi in India and Imran Khan in Pakistan at about the same time, I see tell-tale likenesses with Donald Trump in the US. In Pakistan: targeting adversaries as corrupt, “Modi ka yaar” (Modi’s friend), liberal, tool of Western agenda. In India, denouncing “appeasement” of Indian Muslims, asking even Hindu opponents to “go to Pakistan” and vowing to expel Bangladeshi “termites”.

Trump and Modi may be the first of the type in their countries, but Imran Khan is not the first in Pakistan. This country has had the misfortune of suffering from the rule of many a “hero-liberator”. Due largely to them, Pakistan’s brief history is a long succession of military, economic, political and social failures and catastrophes.

It started with Ayub Khan, the handsome general in uniform determined to clean up Pakistan from the scourge of “corrupt politicians”. His slogan was a local version of Trump’s “drain the swamp” and “lock her up”. When Ayub resigned, 11 years later, the country had been wrecked by his political experimentation and military adventurism in Kashmir, leaving the majority population in East Pakistan totally alienated.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto constructed his political career on half-truths and blatant lies, such as Ayub Khan’s alleged surrender of military victories, and threatening to reveal the non-existent secret clauses of the Tashkent Declaration at an appropriate time. Pakistanis were led to believe that their leader’s machismo was more than a match for India’s female prime minister and he was the right man to avenge the military defeat of 1971. Combining charisma, oratory, demagoguery and bluff, Bhutto soon succeeded in his goal of getting to the top. In five short years he landed himself, and the country, in a grave political crisis.

Seizing the opportunity, Ziaul Haque, a cunning hypocrite in uniform, dishonourably despatched him to the gallows in cahoots with vindictive judges and some opportunistic politicians. What followed under this “Mard-e-Momin”, who vowed to Islamise an overwhelmingly Islamic country, was even worse. What Zia lacked in charisma, he made up with a mixture of blatant lies, religious slogans and brute force.

In his second incarnation as prime minister, bolstered by his two-thirds parliamentary majority (“heavy mandate”), Nawaz Sharif began to cast himself as Amir-ul-Momineen (commander of the faithful). Brooking no opposition, he sent hoodlums to storm the Supreme Court, much like Trump had the US Congress invaded.

Then came Pervez Musharraf, the “commando liberator”, with his promise of “enlightened moderation”. For him nothing mattered, not the parliament, not the constitution, not the supreme court, for he knew best. When he was over and done with, the country was in a much worse shape, despite the infusion of billions of dollars from Washington.

And finally there is a new hero-liberator, “Kaptaan” Imran Khan. Advancing a dangerously false narrative over the years, buttressed by his success as a cricket captain and in building a cancer hospital, astutely extracting every ounce of his celebrity status, he presented himself as the messiah who would liberate the country from the clutches of an evil and corrupt clique, solve all its problems within months, not years. It will be recalled that in August 2014, after laying siege to it for a hundred days with the goal of overthrowing the government, Imran Khan had incited his supporters to storm the Parliament House in Islamabad, which is the equivalent of the Capitol building in Washington.

Unfortunately for the country, Imran Khan has turned out to be the most conceited and incompetent head of a Pakistani government ever. Here, as in the US, the signs were there for all to see. Some saw the trees, but not the forest. Too many were mesmerised by their hero and fell for his tall promises.

Returning to the events of January 6 at the US Capitol, those who think that the US is just the same as any Third World country, ought to be reminded that even Trump’s own servile vice president has defied him to defend the constitutional process, many senior leaders of his party have broken ranks and the whole “insurrection” incited by the president was over in 15 hours. The one-term president has been impeached for the second time. Joe Biden will be inaugurated as president on January 20 as stipulated in the constitution.

In Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo”, when Andrea says: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes”, Galileo replies: “No, unhappy the land that needs heroes”. Better “Sleepy Joe” than “Celebrity Trump”! It is true for every country.

(Published in Daily Times, 16 January 2021)

By Razi Azmi

It is nine years to the day since the life of Salman Taseer was cut short at the age of 66 by an assassin’s bullet. His killer was none other than one of the trained men officially assigned, paid and sworn to protect him from harm.

Taseer was a man of many talents: accountant, businessman, entrepreneur, politician, publisher, writer and administrator. Associated with the Pakistan People’s Party since the 1980s, he rose in the hierarchy to become a minister and finally governor of the Punjab, a position he held at the time of his death in 2011.

In whatever he did, Salman Taseer distinguished himself. But he is most remembered for the one quality which cost him his life. He had his heart in the right place and, in an environment fraught with fear, he spoke fearlessly from the heart.

It takes a very brave man to speak out consistently in defence of Pakistan’s many persecuted religious minorities. It takes extra-ordinary courage to ask publicly that this country’s blasphemy laws need to be revisited. But it demands heroism of historic proportions for a provincial governor to be photographed in jail with an ordinary, poor Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, unfairly condemned to death by those very laws and to plead for justice on her behalf while large mobs bayed for her blood.

Salman Taseer was born in 1944 in Simla, then a part of Punjab in British India, of mixed parentage. His father, M D Taseer was one of the founders of the Progressive Writers Movement in Pakistan, along with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who later married the sister of the elder Taseer’s wife, thereby making Faiz an uncle of Salman Taseer. Progressive thinking was thus in the latter’s blood, one might say. He was a progressive to the marrow of his bones and to the last day of his life. In fact, it was his bold progressivism that cost Salman Taseer his life.

While his killer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, has spawned a generation of nutheads within Pakistan, Salman Taseer is mourned by millions in this country and across the world as a martyr for the cause of humanity, regardless of one’s faith, creed or station in life.

No one engages in politics and statecraft for long without some blemish. Salman Taseer is no exception. His partisan dismissal of the Shahbaz Sharif government in the Punjab in 2009 at the behest of his party bosses in Islamabad, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court, is one such.

If Taseer had pedigree, pen, panache, pelf and power in life, he has left progeny who will make him proud. One son, Shahbaz Taseer, who was kidnapped and kept as a hostage for over four years by the assassin’s supporters, continues to speak out bravely for the same causes that had cost his father his life. So does another son, Shaan Taseer. A third, Aatish Taseer, is an accomplished journalist and writer who has earned the ire of the Hindutva bigots in India for speaking out in defence of minorities, including Muslims, in India. 

Salman Taseer’s soul and those who live to mourn his death can take some satisfaction from the fact that it took the painstakingly long but combined and sustained efforts of three successive, mutually antagonistic sets of Pakistani government leaders to finally bring an end to the ordeal of the woman at the centre of this tragedy.

It was the Pakistan People’s Party’s government that arrested and prosecuted Salman Taseer’s killer despite his overwhelming popularity among large segments of the population. It was a Pakistan Muslim League government which could muster the courage to hang him no matter his folk-hero status. And, finally, it was the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf government that was able to get Aasia Bibi’s death sentence overturned and to provide her a safe passage to freedom.

Her prayers alone, or those of her children, should suffice to guarantee Salman Taseer a place of honour in the hereafter. May his soul rest in peace!

(Published in Daily Times, 4 January 2021)

by Razi Azmi