fatman17
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Khaki problem -- poverty of imagination
Islamabad diary
Friday, July 30, 2010
Ayaz Amir
The most conservative section of Pakistani society, wedded to old ways and incapable of fresh thought, is not the religious establishment. We need to rid ourselves of this delusion. The fortress of conservatism, the last and most impregnable redoubt of backward thinking, is -- dismal thought -- our celebrated army.
Turkey's path to liberation and later regeneration was blazoned by the Turkish army, led by Mustafa Kemal. The Pakistan army has never been the Turkish army. Its regiments still take pride in their British past and the colours and standards which date from British times. But this is a minor objection. More relevant to our discussion is the conservative cast of the army's thinking, from 1947 until today. No wonder, the Pakistan army has never produced a Mustafa Kemal, all army chiefs, without exception, having been staunch upholders of the inherited status quo.
Even upholding the status quo would have been a blessing if the army had confined its role to just that. But under Gen Zia, and subsequently, the army command went one step further. It promoted reactionary thought and in the cauldron of its extended Afghan experience gave birth to the monsters which bedevil and haunt Pakistan today.
The religious establishment did not invent the politics of jihad. It was but an instrument, albeit an all too willing one, in a larger design drawn up by the paladins of a military establishment which over the years has shown itself to be more confused than the rest of the nation.
We are not surprised when certified priests and other doctors of the faith behave as they do, when they use their deadliest weapon, the loudspeaker, to deadly effect, or when a babble of different noises pours forth from their various pulpits. They are conforming to type. But from the army, touted endlessly as the country's most organised and powerful institution, as the force holding the country together -- although this last is a highly debatable point -- it is logical to expect if not a Turkish rebirth at least something resembling intellectual and moral leadership.
What we see instead is just the opposite, not intellectual bankruptcy, which would be too harsh an indictment, but a poverty of imagination. The horizons of the army mind are limited. The army command, or call it the general staff, remains a prisoner of notions -- it would be too flattering to call them doctrines -- which are outmoded: the need to exercise influence in Afghanistan, the search for strategic depth in that same quarter, the jihadi option in Kashmir, the threat from India and the way this remains an unchanging mantra on the lips of army officers.
Maybe India also suffers from a similar poverty of imagination. Certainly, many of India's positions vis-à-vis Pakistan are hard to understand, at least for most Pakistanis. But a blinkered approach on the part of our neighbour should not necessarily elicit a similar response from us. We should try to be different, our distinction lying not in responding in tit-for-tat fashion to every Indian move but excelling in the race of ideas.
There was never a need for Pakistan to be a fortress of Islam. Throughout the 800 years of Muslim history in the subcontinent Hinduism felt threatened on occasion, never Islam. Even when the Mughal empire was in decline and different centres of power and influence were emerging across this vast and varied land, Islam was never in danger. Pakistan needed to be a laboratory of radical ideas, a fortress of democracy and enlightenment, instead of becoming a playground for military dictators, all of limited imagination, and a laboratory for 'jihadi' experiments that we could surely have done without.
The various Islamist outfits, of mind-boggling variety, on a rampage of death and destruction in the name of Islam bear testimony to our talent in this regard, a talent in whose fruition, or rather coming of age, the knights templar of the military establishment were fully involved.
And while travelling this dangerous road we scarcely recognised the insidious consequences. To some extent we were always an inward-looking people, obsessed with a mythic rendering of the past. But we became more inward, and compensated for failures on the political and secular fronts by taking refuge in a very warped and unreal interpretation of the faith. The more we fell back, and the greater our temporal failures, the more religious we became. Not religious in the real sense, which would not have been a bad thing, but religious in the sense of lip-service and make-belief. In the process we made a new religion out of hypocrisy.
The army cannot escape blame for this state of affairs. Through its coups, its inordinate influence over domestic and foreign policy, the sweep and power of its intelligence agencies, and the jihadism fostered in Afghanistan and Kashmir, it has been the driving force behind Pakistan's steady march to the shores of dis-enlightenment and despair.
If we are a less enlightened country today than in 1947, if the Pakistani mind has become a closed mind over the years, if the national currency has been hypocrisy and the national wage confusion, the army, as the country's strongest institution, as the keeper of the national flame, as the ultimate guardian of the national interest -- a phrase not without its overtones of comedy -- has to accept a major share of the blame for this lurid landscape, dotted with the wreckage of so many expired hopes and shattered expectations.
All of this could not have happened without the army's contribution. None of this can be undone without the army changing direction. If a self-serving and self-justifying narrative of past and present has a hold on the army's mind, the army's way of thinking has a stranglehold on the Pakistani mind. Pakistan needs a double liberation but the army's liberation has to come first.
There's no better place to begin than the present war the army is fighting. Despite the army's many successes, which would not have been possible without good leadership and the great sacrifices of our troops, this will remain an incomplete war unless Pakistan becomes a less intolerant and more open society.
The frontiers of hypocrisy need to shrink. The tyranny of the unchecked loudspeaker -- among the more virulent of our many tyrannies -- needs to be tempered. Hate and a narrow reconstruction of the past have to be excised from our textbooks. The crying shame of our multiple education system -- one for the privileged and the semi-privileged -- another for the relatively dispossessed majority -- has to be ended.
And the one interpretation of Islam that should be countenanced is that derived, or rather distilled, from that timeless cry of the Caliph Omar that if a dog went hungry by the banks of the Euphrates, he (the commander of the faithful) would be held to account on the Day of Judgment. If this be the guiding principle of our Islam, other things fall into place. The provision of bread, the provision of justice and the glorification, nay deification, of education -- as reflected in the injunction of the Prophet, peace be upon him, that to seek education go to China if you must -- are the only true pillars of the state that we should have constructed long ago.
Even now it is not too late. Our victories should be of the mind, our highest endeavours those which advance the cause of human understanding, our trophies those which should find a place, however lowly, in the pantheon of human achievement. But for this we have to cut through the shibboleths of the past and reform our leading institutions. The state must change but before that, Caesar must change and complete his re-education.
Tailpiece: A hero for our times is the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, who could not have borne the death of his son, at the hands of the Taliban, more stoically and with greater fortitude. He has said that he was proud to be the father of a shaheed and that if his son was hit with eight bullets he would wish for nothing better than to die with ten bullets in his chest. But he has also said that enough death and destruction had occurred and the enemies of humanity should forsake the paths of violence. These are the words of a very brave man.
Email: winlust@gmail.com
i dont know what the retd capt. is trying to say here - maybe others can comment!
Islamabad diary
Friday, July 30, 2010
Ayaz Amir
The most conservative section of Pakistani society, wedded to old ways and incapable of fresh thought, is not the religious establishment. We need to rid ourselves of this delusion. The fortress of conservatism, the last and most impregnable redoubt of backward thinking, is -- dismal thought -- our celebrated army.
Turkey's path to liberation and later regeneration was blazoned by the Turkish army, led by Mustafa Kemal. The Pakistan army has never been the Turkish army. Its regiments still take pride in their British past and the colours and standards which date from British times. But this is a minor objection. More relevant to our discussion is the conservative cast of the army's thinking, from 1947 until today. No wonder, the Pakistan army has never produced a Mustafa Kemal, all army chiefs, without exception, having been staunch upholders of the inherited status quo.
Even upholding the status quo would have been a blessing if the army had confined its role to just that. But under Gen Zia, and subsequently, the army command went one step further. It promoted reactionary thought and in the cauldron of its extended Afghan experience gave birth to the monsters which bedevil and haunt Pakistan today.
The religious establishment did not invent the politics of jihad. It was but an instrument, albeit an all too willing one, in a larger design drawn up by the paladins of a military establishment which over the years has shown itself to be more confused than the rest of the nation.
We are not surprised when certified priests and other doctors of the faith behave as they do, when they use their deadliest weapon, the loudspeaker, to deadly effect, or when a babble of different noises pours forth from their various pulpits. They are conforming to type. But from the army, touted endlessly as the country's most organised and powerful institution, as the force holding the country together -- although this last is a highly debatable point -- it is logical to expect if not a Turkish rebirth at least something resembling intellectual and moral leadership.
What we see instead is just the opposite, not intellectual bankruptcy, which would be too harsh an indictment, but a poverty of imagination. The horizons of the army mind are limited. The army command, or call it the general staff, remains a prisoner of notions -- it would be too flattering to call them doctrines -- which are outmoded: the need to exercise influence in Afghanistan, the search for strategic depth in that same quarter, the jihadi option in Kashmir, the threat from India and the way this remains an unchanging mantra on the lips of army officers.
Maybe India also suffers from a similar poverty of imagination. Certainly, many of India's positions vis-à-vis Pakistan are hard to understand, at least for most Pakistanis. But a blinkered approach on the part of our neighbour should not necessarily elicit a similar response from us. We should try to be different, our distinction lying not in responding in tit-for-tat fashion to every Indian move but excelling in the race of ideas.
There was never a need for Pakistan to be a fortress of Islam. Throughout the 800 years of Muslim history in the subcontinent Hinduism felt threatened on occasion, never Islam. Even when the Mughal empire was in decline and different centres of power and influence were emerging across this vast and varied land, Islam was never in danger. Pakistan needed to be a laboratory of radical ideas, a fortress of democracy and enlightenment, instead of becoming a playground for military dictators, all of limited imagination, and a laboratory for 'jihadi' experiments that we could surely have done without.
The various Islamist outfits, of mind-boggling variety, on a rampage of death and destruction in the name of Islam bear testimony to our talent in this regard, a talent in whose fruition, or rather coming of age, the knights templar of the military establishment were fully involved.
And while travelling this dangerous road we scarcely recognised the insidious consequences. To some extent we were always an inward-looking people, obsessed with a mythic rendering of the past. But we became more inward, and compensated for failures on the political and secular fronts by taking refuge in a very warped and unreal interpretation of the faith. The more we fell back, and the greater our temporal failures, the more religious we became. Not religious in the real sense, which would not have been a bad thing, but religious in the sense of lip-service and make-belief. In the process we made a new religion out of hypocrisy.
The army cannot escape blame for this state of affairs. Through its coups, its inordinate influence over domestic and foreign policy, the sweep and power of its intelligence agencies, and the jihadism fostered in Afghanistan and Kashmir, it has been the driving force behind Pakistan's steady march to the shores of dis-enlightenment and despair.
If we are a less enlightened country today than in 1947, if the Pakistani mind has become a closed mind over the years, if the national currency has been hypocrisy and the national wage confusion, the army, as the country's strongest institution, as the keeper of the national flame, as the ultimate guardian of the national interest -- a phrase not without its overtones of comedy -- has to accept a major share of the blame for this lurid landscape, dotted with the wreckage of so many expired hopes and shattered expectations.
All of this could not have happened without the army's contribution. None of this can be undone without the army changing direction. If a self-serving and self-justifying narrative of past and present has a hold on the army's mind, the army's way of thinking has a stranglehold on the Pakistani mind. Pakistan needs a double liberation but the army's liberation has to come first.
There's no better place to begin than the present war the army is fighting. Despite the army's many successes, which would not have been possible without good leadership and the great sacrifices of our troops, this will remain an incomplete war unless Pakistan becomes a less intolerant and more open society.
The frontiers of hypocrisy need to shrink. The tyranny of the unchecked loudspeaker -- among the more virulent of our many tyrannies -- needs to be tempered. Hate and a narrow reconstruction of the past have to be excised from our textbooks. The crying shame of our multiple education system -- one for the privileged and the semi-privileged -- another for the relatively dispossessed majority -- has to be ended.
And the one interpretation of Islam that should be countenanced is that derived, or rather distilled, from that timeless cry of the Caliph Omar that if a dog went hungry by the banks of the Euphrates, he (the commander of the faithful) would be held to account on the Day of Judgment. If this be the guiding principle of our Islam, other things fall into place. The provision of bread, the provision of justice and the glorification, nay deification, of education -- as reflected in the injunction of the Prophet, peace be upon him, that to seek education go to China if you must -- are the only true pillars of the state that we should have constructed long ago.
Even now it is not too late. Our victories should be of the mind, our highest endeavours those which advance the cause of human understanding, our trophies those which should find a place, however lowly, in the pantheon of human achievement. But for this we have to cut through the shibboleths of the past and reform our leading institutions. The state must change but before that, Caesar must change and complete his re-education.
Tailpiece: A hero for our times is the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, who could not have borne the death of his son, at the hands of the Taliban, more stoically and with greater fortitude. He has said that he was proud to be the father of a shaheed and that if his son was hit with eight bullets he would wish for nothing better than to die with ten bullets in his chest. But he has also said that enough death and destruction had occurred and the enemies of humanity should forsake the paths of violence. These are the words of a very brave man.
Email: winlust@gmail.com
i dont know what the retd capt. is trying to say here - maybe others can comment!
