| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| India is perversely fortunate to have Pakistan as a neighbour |
| 2007-06-29 |
| By MUKUL KESAVAN The furore in Pakistan about Salman RushdieÂ’s knighthood tells us a great deal about that peculiar country and something about ours. Of the many protests that the knighthood seems to have provoked in Pakistan (among them effigy burnings, street protests, political resolutions and outraged diplomatic memorandums) there were two that were of particular interest: one, the announcement by Zia-ul-HaqÂ’s son, now a federal minister, that the British governmentÂ’s decision to confer the knighthood was a provocation grave enough to justify any suicide bombings that might follow and two, the decision of a shopkeepersÂ’ association to offer lakhs of rupees to any Muslim who decapitated Rushdie. The minister back-pedalled when the British government let the Pakistani state, its ally in the war against terror, know that it wasnÂ’t amused, but that he made the statement in the first place is significant. It would be a mistake to see this only as a sonÂ’s attempt to claim his fatherÂ’s Islamist mantle, though that might be part of the explanation. The statementÂ’s significance lies in the insight it offers into the political compulsions of a majoritarian state. The Pakistani state explicitly derives its legitimacy from its Muslim people. Created in the name of Muslim self-determination, its nationalist self-image is a collage of two political styles: Pan-Islamist rhetoric and Kashmir-centred revanchism. This myth of origin, combined with the chronic failure of representative politics in that country, made it hard for PakistanÂ’s political culture to develop the secular populism that legitimizes electoral politics in third-world countries, which helped democracy strike roots in republican India. |
| Posted by:John Frum |
| #3 majoritarian state constitutionally defined by faith fights a losing battle against ideologues who can wheel out the howitzers of revelation against the pragmatic, necessarily compromising nature of democratic politics Or any rational politics whatsoever. I wish everybody who's committed to democratization (and/or pragmatic cooperation with local dictators) of MME, would study Pakistan. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-06-29 14:29 |
| #2 Ahh... the Wuthering Heights analysis of politics and the sub-continent. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-06-29 14:24 |
| #1 India is like a child born into poverty but on the way to becoming a success due to a wholesome value system and the ability to play well with others. Pakistan is like India's deformed younger sibling with a sense of inferiority, a creeping persecution complex, antisocial traits and a desire to hang out with the wrong crowd. The visible comparison between the two nations is almost like a controlled experiment in a laboratory of Islamic culture's ability to poison and warp one people who would otherwise be virtually identical to the other. |
| Posted by: Grumenk Philalzabod0723 2007-06-29 04:55 |