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Four reasons why the Pakistan election matters to India, with some help from Faiz

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For one, the unstable situation in Jammu & Kashmir, like it or not, has a direct connection with better relations with Pakistan.

Forty-eight hours before Pakistan was to go to the polls — after a long and bruising campaign that has seen one former prime minister arrested, another leader tormented by his ex-wife’s book, and a third emerge through a baptism-by-fire despite his illustrious last name — Coke Studio released a music video heralding its 11th season, called Hum Dekhenge.

Now, the poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, written in the late 1970s and sung by Iqbal Bano in 1985 at the height of Zia-ul-Haq’s repressive regime, has become somewhat of an anthem in a country that has spent more than half its independent life under an assortment of coups, martial law and dictatorship.

The following lines are immortal. They speak of an imminent revolution when God’s people will rule the earth in what will be a proletariat paradise:

Sab taj uchhale jayenge/Sab takht giraaye jaaenge….

Uthega an-al-haq ka naara/Jo main be hoon aur tum bhi ho

Aur aaj karegi Khalq-i-Khuda/Jo main bhi hoon aur tum bhi ho

The wonderful thing about the Coke studio music video is that it distributes Faiz’s poem among a variety of singers from all over the country. So, you have the inimitable Abida Parveen, but also qawwals like Attaullah Khan Niazi Esakhelvi, the tattooed Krewella sisters from the US, Jahan and Yasmin Yousaf, and rap bands from the Lyari-Mohajir ghetto in Karachi.

Old-timers recall Iqbal Bano performing the song at a stadium in Lahore, wearing a sari when saris were banned by Zia, with slogans of ‘Inquilab zindabad‘ peppering the performance

Those goose-bumps of memory are now reincarnated in the modern Coke Studio number.

Today, as one elected government gives way to another — for only the second time in Pakistan’s history — Pakistan’s never-say-die spirit is being sought to be slowly but deliberately crushed in a pincer attack by the intelligence agency, the ISI, and the powerful military establishment.

So much so, that an Islamabad High Court judge, only a few days ago, named the ISI as an instrument of pressure on a number of candidates — only to be rapped on his knuckles by none other than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Question is, why should India care? Should we let Pakistan, a country of 200 million mostly poor people, where the “milt-establishment” (an evocative phrase created by The Friday Times editor Najam Sethi) routinely uses terror groups it has so lovingly created as an instrument of state policy, especially against India, to stew in its own juices?

Apart from the nightmare that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of these terrorists and send the world slowly spinning towards Armageddon, does it really matter what, whether and how Pakistan takes one step forward or two back on the democracy ladder?

Of course it does, for the following four reasons:

First, if Pakistan was somewhere in the western Pacific, a neighbour of Nauru Islands, it wouldn’t matter at all if it was a theocracy, a dictatorship or if its terrorists bore striking similarities to alien blue people. Fact is, it’s not. As it remains forever watchful about its western neighbour, Delhi knows that democrats are much more likely to bring normalcy than dictators. It is, therefore, in India’s interest that a pro-peace government is elected next door.

Second, an outbreak of peace has its own advantages. Most importantly, it promotes people-to-people contact. In end-2012, both governments signed visa, travel and trade agreements to allow much greater travel to-and-fro and effectively end up erasing the border. Unfortunately, those have never been implemented, largely because of the Modi government’s tough policies towards Pakistan. Both countries unfortunately remain in a state of petrified rigidity.

Third, the unstable situation in Jammu & Kashmir, like it or not, has a direct connection with better relations with Pakistan. In 2005, when the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus first rolled across the Line of Control, people came out of their homes all along the Valley and clapped as the bus zipped past. Delhi knows that peace in J&K is directly linked to improved relations with Srinagar as well as with Islamabad.

Certainly, it’s time to finish the unfinished business of history. Over the last 20 years since they went nuclear, India and Pakistan have tried a variety of options, ranging from Kargil to the Pathankot and Uri attacks as well as the 2016 surgical strikes. But no solution has been reached.

If India and Pakistan have to move beyond the ghastly wounds of Partition they keep revisiting intermittently, they must seriously pitch for normalcy.

The cold peace that Egypt and Israel have waged for the last several decades could be adopted to the India-Pakistan format, except that memories of the Partition, in which 17 million people moved from one side to the other in what is now said to be the largest forced migration in history, still come in the way. There is still no closure to these memories of hate.

This brings me to the fourth reason why India must be deeply interested in Pakistan’s fate: Punjab.

It was in Punjab that the killings and rapes and maiming and riots during Partition took place. The Kashmir story came much later. Closure must be sought for Punjab, just as it is sought for Kashmir. As families who had lived for centuries in relative togetherness turned on each other, the blood feud spawned by politics and politicians simmered. It has been kept alive these 71 years, and must now be brought to an end.

Perhaps that is why the Faiz poem, Hum Dekhenge, and the Coke studio number enthrall us so much on both sides of the divide. Despite the fact that the ISI and the army — “the boys”, as Pakistanis describe them — will likely remain in control of whatever party comes to power, it is uplifting to see the country’s people refusing to give up trying to gain a semblance of normalcy in their lives.

From I.K. Gujral, who, as Prime Minister in the mid-1990s, believed that India must turn the other cheek with Pakistan, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has practiced an “eye-for-an-eye” policy, India has swung on the roller-coaster.

Much better to stay the middle course. Applaud if a democrat comes to power and if one doesn’t, tighten your seatbelt and wait and watch until they do.

Soon the votes will be counted. Nawaz Sharif, diabetic and ill, will vote from inside Adiala jail. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the youngest prime ministerial candidate at 29 years, will likely come to power in Sindh province despite his heavy Oxbridge accent. Imran Khan may or may not yet get the fright of his life.

What if Imran doesn’t sweep the table his mentors in the ISI-military have allegedly tried so hard to keep tidy? What if Nawaz Sharif’s PML (N) holds on to Punjab?

For whomever the bells toll in Pakistan, be sure that the sound of that ringing will be heard in Delhi too.

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1 COMMENT

  1. I think I K Gujaral was wrong. Pakistan will never understand a language of Love and Peace. I agree with Modu’s eyes for eyes. Nehru and Gandhi family destroyed India. India has to get tough. Why America is a friend of Israel even buying Arab’s oil. Main reson is Israel is much powerful. Once India becomes powerful nation whole world will respect Indian. Hindu Holly book allows Indian to take arms to protect.

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