V V: Re-imagining Pakistan

Much before Abbottabad, literature on Pakistan, from western sources as well as Pakistani scholars, dealt with a single recurrent theme: can Pakistan survive or will it, like the Soviet Union, implode sooner rather than later, by 2020? A long-running multidimensional crisis, political and ethnic strife, an unprecedented economic crisis, and growing Islamic extremism, which plays host to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban and is now vying for influence in anticipation of an eventual western withdrawal, were enough pointers to the shape of things to come. Close observers of the Af-Pak scene had apparently seen the future and it didn’t work.

 

Dr Maleeha Lodhi, former Pakistani ambassador to the US and UK, who belonged to the inner circle of Pakistan’s power elite, doesn’t think all is lost. In the introduction to a collection of essays, Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State (C Hurst, reprinted by Rupa, Rs 495), she says: “Pakistan is a weak state but a strong society” that will see it through despite all the prophecies of doom.

The book is a collection of 17 essays by some of Pakistan’s best intellectuals. Each essay defines the country’s pressing problems and attempts to propose a range of solutions that could shape Pakistan’s future. These scholarly essays, not India-centric, are concerned with the inner dynamics of Pakistani society as well as its contradictions and what can and should be done about them. Some of the leading essays are: Ayesha Jalal’s “The past and present”; Mohsin Hamid’s “Will Pakistan survive?”; Maheela Lodhi’s “Beyond the crisis state”; Zahid Hussain’s “Battling militancy”; Meekal Ahmed’s “An economic crisis state?”; Shanza Khan and Moeed Yusuf’s “Education as a strategic imperative”; Ahmed Rashid’s “The Afghan conundrum”; and Syed Rifaat Hussain’s “The India factor”.

As expected from a former high-ranking official of the establishment, all the essays reflect a positive outlook for the future. It is, however, refreshing that they don’t shirk from discussing the problems that bedevil Pakistan, nor are they obsessed with the India factor. That should be incentive enough to read them.

The opening essay, “The past as present” by leading historian Ayesha Jalal, provides the historical background against which Pakistan has been described by a western columnist as “Paranoidistan — a state that suspects every US move was designed to weaken Pakistan for the benefit of a secret US alliance with India”.

Dr Jalal ascribes this to “a psychologically introverted mindset that is resistant to critical self-reflection (and becomes) suspicious and paranoid”. She goes on to say: “The idea of history as a study of the past through rigorous investigative methods of critical enquiry has suffered from willful neglect in the interest of promoting new-fangled ideologies defined by regimes pursuing the politics of self perpetuation.” This was due to “dysfunctional education system and a closed media that has led to the dissemination of some remarkable distortions and mistruths”.

The answer to the problems of Pakistan has to be sought in its chequered history because “without a credible history, a people cannot develop a historical consciousness, much less a national one. By devaluing history for political and ideological reasons, Pakistan has found it difficult to project a national identity that can strike a sympathetic chord with its heterogeneous people. Sixty-three years after independence, Pakistan is still trying to define its inner and outer contours of its national identity. The dilemma flows from a stubborn refusal to accept the more awkward truths about the historical circumstances surrounding its birth”. This is a brilliant essay that sums up just about everything that has gone wrong with Pakistan.

Dr Lodhi’s own essay, from which the title of the book has been derived, is a summary of post-1999 Pakistan. Her analysis of what constituted the essence of the Musharraf era and what factors brought it to an end offers a cogent view of recent political history. She believes the era also saw the emergence of a politically conscious middle class that could decide the future course of action.

But the middle class can deliver only if two crucial elements are taken care of: money and education. Mohsin Hamid (author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist) revisits taxation and Pakistan’s unsustainable fiscal realities in the essay titled “Why Pakistan will survive”. Hamid has written an emotional piece about Pakistan’s resilience and willingness to fight the odds but if the taxes “amount to a mere 10 per cent of GDP” and if corruption is rampant across the board, where will the money come from?

You are reminded here of a famous phrase by French poet Paul Valery, who had said there were two dangers that threatened the world: order and disorder. India had apparently chosen disorder. But this apparent disorder has an implicit order that makes very complex ingredients run and remain in unison. Pakistan had chosen order with its single religion and military regimes. But within it lies a secret disorder in which its ingredients portend to get dangerously out of control. It is this dialectic of these two dangers that threatens Pakistan.