Debating Liberal Fascism

[Vinod2070]

Is Rabzon no longer active? No post from him for a long time.

 

[Bang Galore]

Delusional liberals

Shashi Tharoor

International affairs all too often seems a weighty subject, full of complexity and nuance, laden with portents of tension and conflict. No wonder it lends itself to overly solemn treatment, full of abstract analyses and recondite allusions:

the relations between countries, it is usually assumed, cannot be understood through the recitation of trivial anecdotes.
True enough. And yet sometimes a minor incident, a tempest in a teacup, can illuminate broader foreign policy challenges. Something of this nature happened this week, when Aatish Taseer, the estranged son (by an Indian mother) of the recently-assassinated governor of Pakistani Punjab, Salman Taseer, wrote a searing column in the Wall Street Journal, with the provocative title “Why My Father Hated India”, on the pathologies of hatred that in his view animated Pakistan’s attitude to our country.
“To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge — its hysteria — it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan,” Aatish Taseer averred. “This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan’s animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.”
He went on to make his point in language that was both sharp and, at least to this reader, heartfelt and accurate. I do not know Aatish Taseer, nor had I met his colourful father, but I have admired the young man’s writing, particularly his poignant ruminations on Salman Taseer’s murder by his Islamist bodyguard earlier this year. So I was surprised to see the outraged reactions his article provoked from Pakistani liberal journalists. A number of them whose ideas I have appreciated and whom I “follow” on Twitter — the likes of Marvi Sirmed and Mosharraf Zaidi, widely-respected progressive thinkers both — reacted with rage and derision. One of them, the estimable Ejaz Haider, who has penned some courageous pieces in the Pakistani press criticising his own country, went so far as to author an entire column to disparage and deconstruct Aatish Taseer’s.
Young Taseer had, in his piece, put the onus on the Pakistani Army for that country’s problems, and particularly for diverting the vast amounts of American aid it has received (he underestimated it at “$11 billion since 9/11”) to arming itself against India. He added, powerfully, words I would have gladly put my own name to: “In Afghanistan, it has sought neither security nor stability but rather a backyard, which — once the Americans leave — might provide Pakistan with ‘strategic depth’ against India. In order to realise these objectives, the Pakistani Army has led the US in a dance, in which it had to be seen to be fighting the war on terror, but never so much as to actually win it, for its extension meant the continuing flow of American money. All this time the Army kept alive a double game, in which some terror was fought and some — such as Laskhar-e-Tayyaba’s 2008 attack on Mumbai — actively supported.
“The Army’s duplicity was exposed decisively this May,” he went on, “with the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. It was only the last and most incriminating charge against an institution whose activities over the years have included the creation of the Taliban, the financing of international terrorism and the running of a lucrative trade in nuclear secrets. This Army, whose might has always been justified by the imaginary threat from India, has been more harmful to Pakistan than to anybody else. It has consumed annually a quarter of the country’s wealth, undermined one civilian government after another and enriched itself through a range of economic interests, from bakeries and shopping malls to huge property holdings.”
It is hard to imagine anyone in India, however sympathetic they might be to Pakistan, dissenting from this view of the malign role of the Pakistani military. In our naïveté, we also tend to assume that Pakistani liberals would agree with us, seeing the salvation of their land lying in greater democracy and development, free of the stranglehold of the world’s most lavishly-funded military (in terms of percentage of national resources and GDP consumed by any Army on the planet). Alas, judging by their reactions to Taseer’s article, this seems not to be the case.
In his rebuttal, Ejaz Haider goes into great detail about the strength and deployment patterns of the Indian Army, as if to justify the Pakistani military’s behaviour. But there is no recognition whatsoever that India’s defence preparedness is prompted entirely by the fact that Pakistan has launched four incursions into our territory, in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999; that India is a status quo power that manifestly seeks nothing more than to be allowed to grow and develop in peace, free from the attentions of the Pakistani military and the militants and terrorists it sponsors; and bluntly, that there is not and cannot be an “Indian threat” to Pakistan, simply because there is absolutely nothing Pakistan possesses that India wants. If proof had to be adduced for this no doubt unflattering assessment, it lies in India’s decision at Tashkent in 1966 to give “back” to Pakistan every square inch of territory captured by our brave soldiers in ***************** Kashmir, including the strategic Haji Pir Pass, all of which is land we claim to be ours. If we do not even insist on retaining what we see as our own territory, held by Pakistan since 1948 but captured fair and square in battle, why on earth would we want anything else from Pakistan?
No, the “Indian threat” is merely a useful device cynically exploited by the Pakistani military to justify their power (and their grossly disproportionate share of Pakistan’s national assets). But Pakistani liberals are particularly prone to the desire to prove themselves true nationalists; it is the best way to ensure that their otherwise heretical opinions are not completely discredited by the men in uniform who hold the reins of power in the state.
As this otherwise minor editorial spat demonstrates, Indians need to put aside their illusions that there are liberal partners for us on the other side of the border who echo our diagnosis of their plight and share our desire to defenestrate their military. Nor should we be surprised: a Pakistani liberal is, after all, a Pakistani before he is a liberal.

The author is a member of Parliament from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency

Delusional liberals | The Asian Age

 

[Perceptron]

Shashi Tharoor, where his "word" weight carries much more in the diplomatic world, is sure to ruffle some feathers amongst the right-leaning (pseudo)liberals in the Land of the Pure. But even to me, this snippet beats the dead donkey too much

As this otherwise minor editorial spat demonstrates, Indians need to put aside their illusions that there are liberal partners for us on the other side of the border who echo our diagnosis of their plight and share our desire to defenestrate their military. Nor should we be surprised: a Pakistani liberal is, after all, a Pakistani before he is a liberal.

I am sure, there are people like Pervez Hoodbhoy, Najam Sethi, Ayesha Siddiqa and to a good extent the otherwise despised in Pakistan who carry the onus on criticizing the Army to a measurable extent. But again, when someone with dark secrets in their bosom like Saleem Shahzad turn up dead, we ought to know in how much of a state of fear the liberals might have to live. And i can say with measured confidence to the point of being redundant, no person with the clout of Shashi Tharoor in the diplomatic world (maybe with the exception of Hussain Haqqani) can dispute this stand of Tharoor, except with what's mentioned in the last paragraph.

 

[pak-marine]

Militant liberal



For over two decades, Pakistan’s socio-political landscape has been dominated by narratives and actions of the religious right.

Those concerned by the right’s onslaught and dominance have bemoaned the decline and defeat of the country’s ‘moderate’ and liberal polities, rightly complaining that their voices have been drowned.

The religious right’s growing intolerance, intimidation and sometimes outright violence (ever since the 1980s), has actually helped it control and almost monopolise Pakistan’s religious and political discourse, allowing the spread of various right-wing fringe groups.

Though both the religious right and liberal sections of the population still have their mainstream political outlets, it is the religious right that is ruling the roost when it comes to visible militancy and affective propaganda.

But it wasn’t always like that. Below we look at the once thriving militant expressions of secular and left-wing Pakistan that offered stiff resistance to right-wing militancy but today lie forgotten under the cruel heap of contemporary history.

Red Guards
Group formed by the workers of the left-wing Democratic Students Federation (DSF) in 1955.

DSF was Pakistan’s largest student organisation in the 1950s, but it was banned by the government for being the student-wing of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) that too was banned for allegedly indulging in ‘anti-state activities.’

The Red Guards was put together to (physically) tackle the police and pro-government student groups on the eve of DSF’s attempt to initiate another student organisation (All Pakistan Students Organization).

The Red Guards – made up of pro-DSF toughies – clashed with the police and government-sponsored hoodlums who were sent to disrupt APSO’s launch in Karachi but were able to keep them at bay.

The Red Guards were armed with chains, knives and knuckle-dusters. Some ex-members maintain they also had a few pistols but they were never used.

The outfit was disbanded with the rise of another left-wing student organisation, the National Students Federation (NSF), in the late 1950s.

Further reading: Through a Pakistani’s Eyes: Life on Three Continents –Dr. S Akhtar Ehtisham (Algora Publications)

National Students Federation (Meraj)(NSF)
NSF was the country’s largest and most influential student group in Pakistan in the 1960s, in spite of the fact that it broke into various pro-China and pro-Moscow factions after 1965.

Among the most militant of these factions was NSF-Meraj, led by former firebrand student leader of the University of Karachi, Meraj Muhammad Khan.

While most NSF factions retained affiliation with the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP), the Meraj group moved closer to the then nascent Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in 1967.

It was also this group that led the widespread youth movement against the Ayub Khan dictatorship in the late 1960s in Karachi and dominated politics in the educational institutions of the city.

Its main nemesis here was the student-wing of the Jamat-i-Islami, the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT), with which it regularly clashed on the city’s campuses.

NSF-Meraj was Maoist in orientation and some of its members had advised PPP chairman, Z A. Bhutto, to initiate a ‘Maoist style revolution’ in Pakistan instead of campaigning for social democracy.

Nevertheless, Meraj joined the PPP and became a minister (in 1972), but had a falling out with Prime Minister Bhutto. He was expelled from the party in 1974 and arrested for inciting unrest among factory workers.

NSF-Meraj began losing influence and clout across the 1970s, folding in the late 1980s after a failed attempt by some of its senior patrons to arm its fledgling members at the University of Karachi.

Further reading: Political Dynamics of Sindh – Dr. Tanvir Tahir (Pakistan Studies Centre).

Peoples Guard
During the campaigning of the 1970 general elections, PPP rallies were repeatedly attacked by members of the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT) whose mother party had accused the PPP of ‘undermining Islam’ by spreading ‘atheistic ideas’ like socialism.

The PPP accused the IJT attackers of being funded and backed by the country’s top industrialists and the military regime (of General Yahya Khan).

After another such attack took place at a PPP rally in Lahore, left-wing student leaders like Meraj Muhmammad Khan and Raja Anwar advised Z A. Bhutto to form a ‘Peoples Guard’ to tackle the attackers.

Thus was born the Peoples Guard, structured by Meraj and Raja Anwar and overseen by the brilliant PPP organiser and left-wing intellectual, Shaikh Muhammad Rashid.

The outfit consisted of various young militants belonging to NSF factions and pro-PPP musclemen from Lahore and Karachi’s working-class areas.

They were armed with knives, clubs, chains and a few pistols and were involved in running battles with IJT in the streets of Lahore. No firearms were used.

IJT attacks on the rallies soon came to a halt and the Peoples Guard evolved into becoming Peoples Students Federation (PSF) in 1972 after the first PPP government came into power.

Further reading: Pakistan Peoples Party Rise to Power – Philip E. Jones (Oxford University Press).

Peoples Students Federation (Tipu)
With the fall of the first PPP regime at the hands of Ziaul Haq’s military coup in 1977, PPP workers faced immediate arrests, harassment and torture.

The party chairman, Z A. Bhutto, too was arrested and then put on death row (through a highly controversial trial) for supposedly ordering a murder.

Facing intense reactionary action from the new military junta, the police and its politico-religious backers, former NSF leader and youth minister in Bhutto’s cabinet, Raja Anwar, began forming cells of young working-class PPP members and supporters.

The cells were secretively formed to put pressure on the military regime through court arrests and disrupt the regime’s implementation of harsh laws that included public floggings of anti-Zia students, journalists and, of course, PPP workers.

The cells slipped into disarray when in 1978, a number of PPP workers set themselves on fire to protest against the regime.

Some suggest that Anwar also wanted to arm the cells to conduct urban guerrilla warfare against the right-wing dictatorship, but he has rejected this claim.

Anwar escaped arrest by slipping into the then Soviet-controlled Afghanistan (in 1979-80) to join Bhutto’s exiled sons, Murtaza and Shahnawaz.

Meanwhile the party’s student-wing, PSF (in Karachi) that had been a part of various progressive student alliances in the city’s colleges and universities was facing severe harassment from the police and IJT.

As other progressive and anti-IJT groups like Baloch Students Organization (BSO), Pakhtun Students Federation (PkSF) and the nascent All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO) formed the United Students Movement (USM) at the University of Karachi, PSF got together with NSF to form Taleba Ittihad (TI).

IJT had armed itself with sophisticated weapons; soon USM and TI too began arming themselves.

But shortly before the formation of USM and TI, a loose group from among PSF emerged in Karachi led by Salamullah Tipu.

Tipu who belonged to a lower middle-class Urdu-speaking (Mohajir) family in Karachi had begun his career as a student politician in 1973 with the IJT.

However, he was soon expelled from IJT and he then joined the left-wing NSF in 1974 (According to his maternal uncle, Tipu was convinced that ‘Marx made more sense than Mauddudi!’).

By the time he joined PSF in 1975 at Karachi’s National College, he had bagged a raunchy reputation of being a ‘drunken brawler’ and ‘street-fighter’ who (according to colleagues) ‘specialised in terrorizing IJT members.’

Tipu rose rapidly in PSF and was named the president of PSF’s Karachi wing in 1978.

After IJT began arming itself and Zia regime’s persecution of progressive student groups increased, PSF (in Karachi) became the first non-IJT student outfit to begin arming itself.

The outfit’s most militant and armed group was (unofficially) called PSF-Tipu. In 1980 it attacked an IJT gathering at the University of Karachi (in which an IJT leader was killed).

The incident took place a day after IJT’s notorious (and well armed) ‘Thunder Squad’ had attacked an anti-Zia rally at the university being held by progressive student groups.

IJT members had then handed over some progressive student leaders to the police who dutifully tortured them.

PSF-Tipu folded after Tipu, who too wanted to initiate urban guerrilla warfare against the Zia regime, escaped to Afghanistan and joined Murtaza Bhutto’s Al-Zulfikar.

Further reading: The Terrorist Prince – Raja Anwar (Verso Press).


Al-Zulfikar (AZO)
Formed by Z A. Bhutto’s sons, Murtaza and Shanawaz Bhutto in 1979.

AZ was initially funded and supported by Afghanistan’s communist regime as well as by the radical Ba’athist regime of Syria, Kaddafi’s Libya and Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

It operated from Kabul.

Bulk of AZO’s members consisted of renegade PSF members and workers of radical Pukhtun, Sindhi and Baloch student groups, even though many of its early members hailed from Punjab and Karachi.

AZO fashioned itself as a left-wing urban guerrilla outfit and was involved in a string of political assassinations, bank robberies (to raise funds) and an assassination attempt on the Pope who visited Pakistan in 1981.

It also attempted to twice shoot down the plane carrying Ziaul Haq.

It’s most prominent act came in the shape of the 1981 hijacking of a PIA plane. The hijacking was led by Salamullah Tipu and three other PSF members.

Though the hijacking forced Zia to release dozens of PPP, PSF, NSF and members of various Baloch and Pukhtun organisations ******* in Zia’s already cramped jails, it left the still jailed PPP co-chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, disowning and chastising AZO.

By 1982 a power struggle between AZO chief Murtaza Bhutto, Tipu and the Afghan intelligence agency, KHAD, erupted, and by 1983 Murtaza was convinced that Tipu had managed to form his own group within the AZO.

A paranoid Murtaza prevailed over the increasingly wayward Tipu and – according to Raja Anwar – tricked Tipu into murdering an Afghan for which KHAD arrested and executed Tipu (in 1984).

The second version of AZO (beginning in 1986) only had radical Sindhi militants and AZO was reduced to being a violent Sindhi nationalist organisation before fading away in the early 1990s.

Further reading: The Terrorist Prince – Raja Anwar (Verso Press); Pakistan: A Modern History – Ian Talbot (Palgrave McMillan Press).

Black Eagles
Formed in 1979 in various universities and colleges of Lahore by radical leftist students as a militant anti-Zia student outfit.

Co-operated with other progressive student groups during student union elections, but also began arming itself after IJT started using sophisticated weapons.

Managed to oust IJT from various colleges in Lahore (through both the ballot and the bullet), before folding after the Zia regime’s most severe crackdown on left-wing student groups in 1984.

Black Tigers/Nadeem Commandos
Though the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization was formed (in 1978) by ex-IJT members, it became a self-proclaimed progressive mohajir group.

It also joined various progressive student alliances in Karachi (USM).

APMSO soon spawned Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 1984 which too presented itself as a progressive and secular party.

APMSO gradually became IJT’s leading nemesis in Karachi clashing with IJT’s ‘Thunder Squad’ in its bid to oust IJT from Karachi’s campuses.

It was largely successful in this respect, even though IJT was heavily armed.

To meet this challenge, APMSO/MQM formed secret militant cells and its members began being called Black Tigers.

Though formed to tackle the militant off-shoots of various religious parties in Karachi, the Tigers ended up battling PPP and PSF militants during Benazir Bhutto’s first government (1988-91).

The Tigers evolved into the even more militant ‘Nadeem commandos’ an enigmatic group within MQM which (the government and Army) accused of initiating an urban war (against the state) to form a separate ‘mohajir state.’

As it turned out, though militant cells were present in the MQM, most of them were first constructed to tackle IJT militants.

They were never formed for any separate ‘mohajir state.’

Further reading: Migrants & Militants - Oskar Verkaaik (Princeton University Press); Guns, Slums & Yellow Devils - Laurent Gayer (Cambridge University Press).

 

[pak-marine]

perfect anylisis by NFP gives a clear picture of reasons and people behind militancy all i see mostly IJT was the sc*m from last few decades , these crooks should be exterminated from campuses as only God knows how they are poisoning young impressionable minds through out Pakistan.

 

[muse]

Only in Pakistan, will "Liberal" be understood as leftists and fascist - damn shame how in Pakistan entire meanings are altered.

 

[pak-marine]

Only in Pakistan, will "Liberal" be understood as leftists and fascist - damn shame how in Pakistan entire meanings are altered.

A society where history can be altered , who really cares about one word

 

[muse]

Yes, I take your point -- Changing the meaning of words, changes reality you experience -- but we should all be offended by this - it's our apathy that has led to things going in the direction they are going in.

 

[muse]

We, the “delusional” liberals!
Marvi Sirmed


A place where you can understand the dynamics of international relations and make judgements about an entire nation just by going through Twitter ‘timelines’ of some columnists: welcome to Indo-Pak subcontinent!

In a simplistically written article in The Asian Age (and Deccan Chronicle) on July 21, Shashi Tharoor — one of the most refined and brilliant politicians of India — baffled many Pakistanis. He was reacting to the comments a few of us sent via Twitter on a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, which declared that Salmaan Taseer, the late Governor of Punjab, hated India. The article started with this poorly reasoned point and developed into a powerfully worded argument covering various ailments Pakistan’s establishment has been inflicting on this fateful country since its birth. One would not disagree with the main argument of the article, as it appeared to reproduce what this scribe and so many fellow columnists in Pakistan have been writing for so long. But not everything in that article was agreeable.

Without undermining Indian pride and doubting its strong credentials of democracy and freedom of thought, it is possible to disagree with an Indian writer, one supposes. My disagreement with the WSJ article was at a factual level. Replying to Mr Tharoor’s question about why I “attacked” his favourite author, I asserted my strong agreement with the central argument of the said article. Not only that my agreement could get no attention from Mr Tharoor but my disagreement was painted as my complacency and bid to smokescreen the mistakes on the part of the state of Pakistan.

My disagreement with the WSJ article stood on two deeply flawed arguments of the author. One: that Salmaan Taseer hated India; and two: the idea of Pakistan was given by Sir Mohammad Iqbal. I have written so many times in the past addressing distortions of history by Pakistan and sometimes India too. The ‘delusional liberals’, as we are labelled by a “headline writer” as per Mr Tharoor, do not agree or disagree with an idea based on who said it, but emphasis almost always is put on what is being said and to what degree it compromises on facts.

The proclamation that Taseer hated India is one of the biggest crimes against the truth. Based on many discussions with the late governor, I can say it with full responsibility that the claim is wrong and must be based on some personal considerations, certainly not factual. Many close friends of late Taseer would bear me out on this. This very paper, owned by him, was inaugurated among many Indian guests, including Arundhati Roy. Taseer’s speech on this occasion would still be fresh in the memories of many, in which he not only emphasised the importance of peace between the two neighbours but also made his famous statement about Siachen. He said something to the effect that we cannot afford to keep fighting for a piece of land covered with snow. I am also aware of his tweets, most of which he would write in sheer jest and would enjoy the reaction on them afterwards. His taunts and wittiness was not limited to India; it equally irritated his political rivals at home as well.

Secondly, the downright faulty perception that Iqbal or even Syed Ahmad Khan gave the idea of Pakistan needs to be contested. To see the evidence, one could study the works by Pakistan’s revered historian K K Aziz who wrote Murder of History, an epic work to correct the way history has been distorted to fit poorly envisioned, shortsighted momentary agendas. His work became the inspiration for Professor Krishna Kumar, who wrote Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan, the pioneering comparative study of textbooks, in 2001 and one which covers many issues including a mention to this too.

K K Aziz has also written about the evolution of the idea of Pakistan in his five volumes work, History of the Idea of Pakistan. He, strongly evidenced and duly referenced, has comprehensively dealt with the subject, parts of which can be corroborated by India’s respected historian, Bimal Prasad in his landmark three volumes work Pathway to India’s Partition. At around 64 instances in history before even Syed Ahmad Khan, different people — including Britons — had given the idea of partition in one way or the other. In fact, Iqbal in his letter that appeared in The Times on October 12, 1931, page 8 (now available on the internet), clearly dispels the impression that he had, in his famous Allahabad address, demanded or even spoken of any idea that resembles the establishment of a new state. So powerful is the force of distorted historical texts that even Indians, living in a freer and more democratic environ, appear to have been losing their vision of history.

Coming back to Mr Tharoor, his preconceived notion seems to be that whenever a Pakistani would opine about a foreign — specifically Indian — writer on his Pakistan-specific writing, it is going to be negative. It is going to be an ‘attack’ however slightly a disagreement is made on factual information. It might be true elsewhere, but we in Pakistan keep raising uncomfortable issues with the state, and that too quite frequently. Sometimes by even putting our lives in danger.

Tharoor sahib may also like to know more about the diversity of Pakistani ‘liberals’ before passing judgements, just as we would like to know more about how Mr Tharoor defines ‘liberalism’ and if our liberalism determines the degree to which we should hate our country, it is essentially one certificate that I would not like to get from him. Similarly, for making my voice heard by the masses, I do not need to get a certificate of patriotism from the state of Pakistan.

The difference between him and I may be (in addition to his intellectual superiority) that in order to love my country, I do not feel the need to hate India, which still carries the roots of so many Pakistanis. Just like an Indian liberal is an Indian first, a Pakistani liberal is a Pakistani first. Whenever the conscience has demanded to choose, Pakistani liberals have made the right choice — truth vis-à-vis blind complacency. The reason why we are so critical about our own state is precisely this: we love Pakistan. Please take it as it is.

The writer is a student of international relations and counter-terrorism. She can be reached at marvisirmed@me.com

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

merging similar threads

 

[darkinsky]

hello agno, you need to merge all nadeem paracha comedies together, some people have bad habits to make separate thread out of his comedy skits, you can make title like 'stupid and funny from paracha farts'!!

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

hello agno, you need to merge all nadeem paracha comedies together, some people have bad habits to make separate thread out of his comedy skits, you can make title like 'stupid and funny from paracha farts'!!

NFP is a satirist. As such his commentary really does not belong in the geo-political or national politics sections.

A single thread in the Current Affairs section, akin to the Zaid Hamid thread, should suffice.

I merged this particular article into this thread since it was not entirely a satirical piece, and fit into the general theme of discussion on this thread.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

With friends like these​

By Feisal Naqvi

Published: July 25, 2011

Till recently, I had nothing but respect for Mr Shashi Tharoor. He is not only an accomplished writer and a former under-secretary-general of the UN, but a popularly elected member of India’s parliament. All these are substantial achievements. At the same time, Mr Tharoor’s recent column “Delusional liberals” (Deccan Chronicles, July 21) left me greatly disappointed.

Since Mr Tharoor’s column was but the latest in a series of cross-boundary literary salvos, some background is necessary. This latest border incident began with an examination by Aatish Taseer of Pakistan’s so-called ‘obsession’ with India and, more specifically, the fact that even ‘liberals’ like his late father took much pleasure in any travails which happened to come India’s way. In terms of content, what Taseer Jr had to say was not entirely incorrect, though grossly overstated. However, the references to his father were entirely gratuitous as seen by some Pakistanis, which combined with the tenuous nature of his conclusions, inspired one Ejaz Haider to pen a response (titled “Aatish’s personal fire” and published on these pages on July 19)

Ejaz’s reply to Aatish Taseer made, in essence, two points. The first was that the article was massively simplistic. The second was that our apparent obsession with India was partly justified given the Pakistan-specific nature of India’s military preparations.

Tharoor sahib’s response to Ejaz, in turn, also had two things to say. The first was that Ejaz had missed the apparently evident point that India is a peace-loving nation whose military capabilities are all non-violent and defensive in nature. The second was that, like other Pakistani liberals, Ejaz’s commitment to critical thinking was liable to be overwhelmed by atavistic nationalistic impulses. Or, in the slightly more elegant phraseology of Mr Tharoor, “Indians need to put aside their illusions that there are liberal partners for us on the other side of the border who echo our diagnosis of their plight and share our desire to defenestrate their military. Nor should we be surprised: A Pakistani liberal is, after all, a Pakistani before he is a liberal.”

In the interests of honesty, let me freely concede not only that I found Mr Tharoor’s response to be infuriating but that I said all sorts of rude things about him on Twitter which I probably shouldn’t have said. On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to apologise. For a professional diplomat, Mr Tharoor’s remarks were cretinous in the extreme. In fact, they were probably cretinous by any measure.

Let us begin with the wide-eyed protestations of geostrategic innocence, the casual assertion that India has no hegemonic ambitions, regional or otherwise. Any diplomat who actually believed that would normally be classified as hopelessly naïve. Since Mr Tharoor is no naïf, the conclusion is that he is being economical with the truth. India does see itself as a major power, both economically and militarily; just ask the Sri Lankans or the Nepalese. Or better still, ask the Mandarins from India’s ministry of external affairs arguing that India deserves to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Still, that is not the real problem with Mr Tharoor’s column. As a good Indian diplomat, it is his job to trot out the party line. He knows he’s fibbing. We know he’s fibbing. He knows we know. And so life goes on.

Instead, the real problem with Mr Tharoor’s column is how he transitions from the contention that Pakistan has an unhealthy obsession with India to the conclusion that real Pakistani liberals should share India’s desire to “defenestrate” the Pakistan military. This is dangerous ground.

I have no problem with the contention that Pakistan’s population — especially its establishment — has an unhappy obsession with India. At the same time, the opposite of India-obsessed is not India-submissive. Yes, we Pakistanis should not define ourselves in negative terms, i.e. purely by comparison to India. However, this does not lead to the conclusion that we should not seek to define ourselves at all (as Mr Tharoor apparently believes). Instead, it leads to the conclusion that we Pakistanis need to define ourselves in positive terms.

Mr Tharoor implies that there can be no positive rationale for Pakistan. Given the limitations of this column, all I can say to him is this: I am both Pakistani and liberal. I don’t hate India. Like me, most of Pakistan has no memory of a united subcontinent. In fact, like me, most of Pakistan even has no memory of East Pakistan. This country is all we know, Mr Tharoor, and we intend to keep it. Can we please move on now?

I also have no desire to destroy Pakistan’s military. Pakistan lacks stable institutions and while the armed forces are certainly a major part of our problems, ‘defenestrating’ them is not part of the solution (For a more nuanced version of this argument see Anatol Lieven’s recent book, Pakistan: A Hard Country, Penguin, 2011). Pakistan needs a military which knows its legitimate boundaries and which does not overwhelm our limited resources. But given the neighbourhood we live in, and given our current condition, no reasonable person thinks it advisable to dismantle our armed forces.

There is one final problem with Mr Tharoor’s column. As noted above, his fundamental assumption is that there is no core Pakistani identity besides rejection of India and that Pakistani liberals should join hands with similarly enlightened Indians in seeking the destruction of Pakistan’s military. Ironically, the only other group which shares this simplistic world view is the very Pakistani establishment that Mr Tharoor deprecates. It, too, believes that Pakistani liberals seek the destruction of Pakistan as an independent state. It, too, believes that Pakistani liberals secretly yearn to reunite Pakistan with Maha Bharat.

Let me summarise then. Mr Tharoor’s column is gratuitously smug about India’s supposed lack of strategic ambitions. Mr Tharoor further believes that Pakistan has no legitimate identity besides a rejection of India and that Pakistani liberals — if truly liberal — would acknowledge this fact. He thereby not only confirms all of the Pakistani establishment’s worst fears about India, but also helps delegitimise Pakistani liberals as would-be traitors, even though they are the very persons calling for peace with India. In a word, cretinous.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26th, 2011.

With friends like these – The Express Tribune

 

[T-Faz]

The issue is not so much the definition, but whether it applies to the people involved. The term liberal is overused: in Australia, the center-right party calls itself the Liberal Party, whereas in the US the term is used to differentiate leftists from conservatives. American conservatives will be the first to claim (rightly or wrongly) that they are the defenders of individual liberties and freedoms from the liberal agenda which, purportedly, subjugates individual rights to the liberal vision of a 'greater good' -- hence the charge of elitism.

You are confusing the word liberal here and its application in regards to individuals and parties. At an an individual level, liberal denotes the definition that I provided earlier. In terms of its application to a group or at a national level, then it denoted the practice of being open rather than being open to change individually.

A party can be liberal while also have non-liberal individuals and non liberal practices.

In any case, even if we accept your definition of liberalism, then these Pakistani commentators are not liberal by that definition. The entire premise of the phrase "liberal fascist" is that these people are not liberal, but fascists. Given their intellectual bankruptcy, unwillingness to accept moderation, and tendency to parrot Western/Indian propaganda verbatim, they might more aptly be called "faddists" since they blindly follow the latest fad in the anti-Pakistan circles.

Then why use the term liberal in this particular phrase, its inane while also serving a major agenda of negating the image of Liberals.

Such terms are a product of a right wingers who want to continue their dominance by demonizing the rest.

Pervez Hoodbhoy is always eager to tell you, asked or unasked, that Pakistani nukes are just a hair's breadth away from falling into Taliban hands. Nadeem Paracha can't string three sentences together without breaking out into anti-Muslim hysterics. Aisha Siddiqa never met an army-bashing conspiracy she didn't like.

An individuals view isn't applicable to the entire group, you would be first to say that, then why are you stereotyping here.

Admittedly, there are moderate liberals with impeccable patriotic credentials like Sherry Rahman and Imran Khan, but they get drowned out by extremists on both sides.

Drowned out or scared into silence.

 

[AAtish]

Better be a Liberal than some Islamist whore (PA & ISI) who appeases America on one hand and lets terrorists reside in this country.

Worst of all is the fact that they both bomb us on a daily basis.

Liberal fascist = whores in pleasing packaging...

Islamist whores?? isn't it contradictory?

Anyways, i would like to have both whores out of the country on ASAP basis..