I.H Malik

Pakistan: Weathering the Storm

When the charismatic and two-time former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007), returned to her country on 18 October 2007 from a selfimposed exile in London and Dubai, Pakistan had, in her words, turned into a ‘tinder box’. Home to frequent suicide bombings, mostly attributed to post-9/11 clusters of angry Islamists coming down from the rugged hills of the tribal regions to wreak havoc on their fellow citizens, the country was at the brinks of a civil war. 2007 was certainly a traumatic and perhaps the most taxing year for the country, where history has often repeated itself by virtue of periodic cyclic military take-overs, followed by shorter and often adrift democratic interludes. Bhutto was coming home at a time when General Pervez Musharraf (1943–), despite donning civil and khaki hats over the preceding eight years and having personally benefited from the Western largesse, urgently needed stronger political props. Through the US and British interlocutors, Musharraf and Bhutto had hammered out a power sharing deal whereby the corruption cases against Bhutto and her husband were to be withdrawn, while she would help facilitate his second five year presidential term. Washington, London and Brussels were determined to keep Musharraf at the helm, no matter what he had been doing to the

The politics of ethnicity in Pakistan: the Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir ethnic movements

formed into a ‘political public’? (3) In the process of answering this central question the author studies three NGOs in Rajasthan, namely the Seva Mandir (SM), the Ashtha Sansthan (AS) and the Rajasthan Vanavasi Kalyan Parishad (RKVP). Sahoo identifies three different kinds of political discourses and practices that are promoted by these three NGOs. SM maintains a cooperative stance with the state and practices a nonconfrontational mode of mobilization, AS has a rights-based ‘claim-making’ approach with direct mobilization, and the RKVP is a right wing Hindu outfit that mobilizes tribes on ethnic-identity oriented and religious lines. After studying their politics he classifies civil society in India using three typologies – liberal pluralist (SM), neo-Marxist (AS) and communitarian (RKVP), and this is indeed an original argument. Methodologically, the author has used a comparative case study method from political science and applied it at a micro level very successfully. On a very minor critical note, the book unwittingly equates Civil Society Organization (CSOs), which are a small (albeit the most prominently visible and audible) part of civil society, with ‘Civil Society’ itself. We know that in political and economic philosophy the meaning of the term is much broader. The NGO-fication of civil society or the bureaucratization and depoliticization of this erstwhile intensely political terrain is a relatively recent phenomenon. In that context, the name of the book might have been ‘CSOs and democratization in India’. This is a doctoral dissertation converted into a book with remarkable astuteness and finesse. The book is a seminal contribution to the literature on civil society in India. It is written with clarity and a language free of jargon and thus is a pleasant read. Moreover, the book covers the broad historical period in which civil society in India has been transformed, from the colonial to the postcolonial phase. Civil society and democratization in India summarizes as well as generates important information and data for academics and policy-makers working on issues of civil society in India.

State and Civil Society in Pakistan: Politics of Authority, Ideology, and Ethnicity@@@The Destruction of Pakistan's Democracy@@@Language and Politics in Pakistan

Problems of governance in Pakistan are rooted in a persistently unclear and antagonistic relationship among the forces of authority, ideology and ethnicity. Based on theoretical and empirical research this book focuses on significant themes such as the oligarchic state structure dominated by the military and bureaucracy, civil society, Islam and the formation of Muslim identity in British India, constitutional traditions and their subversion by coercive policies, politics of gender, ethnicity, and Muslim nationalism versus regional nationalisms as espoused by Sindhi nationalists and the Karachi-based Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM).

South Asian Islam and Pakistan: Historiographical Debate

The South Asian sub-continent has the world’s largest Muslim community, which, during testing times, played a vanguard role in initiating a modest but crucial debate on Muslim identity in reference to ideology, state, nationalism, ethnicity, gender-related issues and several powerful forces of Westernization in the wake of colonization and missionary enterprise.1 Following their loss of political power and innovative vigour, the Indian Muslim elites, especially in the post-1857 years, engaged in self-inquiry, and in the process postulated solutions varying from synthesized but still ambiguous India-wide nationalism to territory-based sovereignty. However, before the ongoing debate could actualize into something consensual, the Raj left India, partitioning it, and radically dividing the Muslim community. It is neither to berate arguments for and against Pakistan to simply posit that before the Indian Muslims, already seriously handicapped, could articulate a tangible self-definition, unsettling events overtook them. Divided into ethnic, regional, sectarian and class-based sections and suffering from localism, feudalism and socio-economic underdevelopment, the Indian Muslims were rather caught unawares.

Understanding Civil Society in Pakistan: Imperatives and Constraints

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc the conceptualization of civil society and, in particular, its diverse manifestations in ‘non-Western’ societies have obtained an added academic significance.1 Assuredly, it has assumed the status of an all-encompassing, value-based paradigmatic and institutional framework symbolizing societal empowerment away from statist monopolism. In a powerful sense, it is a prioritization of the former through substantive and substitutive measures without reaching the extremes such as anarchism, total atomism or unrestrained privatization. The multiple enfranchisement of the society through multiple initiatives is aimed at reconstructing a syncretic discourse between the state and civil society by allocating the prerogative to the latter. The aggregate power of ‘saner’, non-coercive, tolerant and non-official institutions is seen as a reversal of the brutalization of state power which has been (and is) so pervasive in various regions. In a rather rudimentary fashion especially in not too infrequent moments of despair, one may simply suggest the total absence as well as impossibility of a civil society in countries like Pakistan, owing to a change-resistant statist unilateralism accompanied by religious totalitarianism.

Relations with India: Nationalism in Contestation

Since 1947, Pakistan’s relations with India have been characterized by a continuing history of mistrust, schism and warfare, and the bi-polarity has been exacerbated by frequent accusations of interference in each other’s domestic affairs. Pakistanis list a number of complaints against their major neighbour to the east, varying from Kashmir to the separation of former East Pakistan, while the Indians allege a Pakistani hand in fomenting trouble in the Punjab and the Kashmir Valley. While Pakistanis suspect Indian involvement in Karachi, the Indian government and some leading right-wing parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuse Pakistan of masterminding the bomb-blasts in Bombay on 6 March 1993 causing more than 300 deaths.1 Following frequent blasts in 1996 in the Pakistani Punjab, officials were also accusing India of destabilizing the most prosperous province of their country.2 Several years after the demise of the global bi-polarity, the South Asian sub-continent still remains a hostage to a cold war with an unabated arms race, advanced nuclear technology and ambitious programmes to develop medium- to long-range missiles. The contentious inter-state relationship has its roots in, as well as spill-over effect on, both the polities and the entire region.

Ideals and National Interests: American Public Diplomacy in Pakistan

Relations between the United States and Pakistan in geopolitics, arms transfers and economic assistance through the early years and since have not only made the headlines but have also received pronounced academic attention. To the contrary, areas of cultural exchange, academic bilateralism, training programmes and their impact on Pakistani society, and, to a lesser extent, on its American counterpart, are the least-explored aspects of the US-Pakistan relationship. It is only in recent years that one notices the emergence of intellectual debate in areas outside geopolitical and security-related realms. A proper comprehension of the cultural influence of the United States, which has far-reaching and controversial impact on a Muslim society like Pakistan is quite crucial in order to understand the symbiotic relationship between the westernized elites and their traditional counterparts. Pakistan, since the 1950s and especially in the 1980s, has been largely a recipient country in the cultural and intellectual sense by undergoing a very curious experience in its national life.

Kashmir and Pakistan: Politics of Nationalism, Regionalism and Islam

Perpetually turbulent and volatile, Indo-Pakistan relations since 1947 have been largely dictated by the Kashmir dispute which, along with some other bilateral irritants, has blocked every effort for South Asian peace. Even after the dissolution of the global Cold War, the contentious issue continues to refurbish the South Asian regional cold war. Whereas both the major contenders would like to avert another war on Kashmir, their inability to resolve the vexing issue has unleashed a plethora of volatile and reactive forces across the spectrum of their societies. The dispute itself, to a large extent, has been the major cause of an unchecked arms race, nuclearization of the region and a greater setback to socio-economic development of one-fifth of human population. Moreover, in a chain-reaction, the Kashmir dispute has exacerbated fundamentalist forces in both countries, further peripheralizing the tolerant and progressive sections within their respective civil societies. While the log-jam over the Himalayan territory has ironically precluded the region from economic self-sufficiency, the Kashmiri populace itself, especially in the Indian-controlled valley, has over the last nine years of defiance, experienced more than 30 000 deaths1 and numerous other instances of heinous crimes against humanity.

Britain, Muslim India and the Pakistanis: a Trans-Cultural Relationship

It is not without foundation that Pakistan’s relations with the Western countries, especially the United Kingdom and the United States, have been a persistent focus of provocative public and private debate.1 Compared to its British counterpart, the American factor has entered only recently and that too with a more pronounced emphasis on security relations accompanying a ‘declared’ public diplomacy, given the US role and ambitions as the superpower.2 On the other hand, the British influence is subtle, well-established, pervasive, diversified and has been diffused through numerous channels and a wide variety of cultural agents. From the English language to the very administrative definition of the country, the state structure, the intellectual ethos at decision-making levels and tangible institutions like defence, the civil service, sports, education, the press, the judiciary, agriculture and economy, all embody enduring British traditions. No area of private or public life has remained unimpacted from a dominant British influence even since the termination of the Raj more than half a century back. It is interesting to see that nostalgia, grudge and admiration mark the successive Pakistani attitudes towards the British, who certainly had their own perceptions of and carried out their own policies towards Muslims in India.

Islam, Muslim Nationalism and Nation-Building in Pakistan: Issues of Identity

Historiography on Pakistan, inclusive of themes such as the debate on Muslim identity, the struggle for independence, the relationship between the centre and the provinces, the uneven interface between state and civil society or the country’s external relationships, especially with India, has tended to be Islam-centric. Pakistani and other observers, in their own separate ways, have tried to disentangle the problematic of Islam both in the achievement and the subsequent nation-building project. Such a recurrent theme is understandable and still posits a formidable challenge. Pakistan’s inception from an evolutionary communitarian ethos owed its rationale, amongst several other factors, to a growing recognition of cultural mutuality that eventually became a demand for political sovereignty based on territorial nationalism. Despite the apparent reluctance and rather rejectionist attitude on the part of the South Asian Muslim religious elite, the political creed itself sought justification (separatism) in religious, regional, economic and such other cultural collectivities. It is a different matter that the espousal of Islamic symbolism by the All-India Muslim League (AIML), despite a cathartic ambivalence, was not geared towards establishing a theocratic polity and rather underwrote an incipient trans-regional identity.