Guruji: A drishta–XIV
S. Gurumurthy
While many Indian leaders saw the painful and high cost Partition as a solution to the Muslim problem, Guruji foresaw Pakistan as a source of persistent enmity for Hindus which would deepen the Hindu-Muslim divide in India. Pakistan”s enmity multiplied hundred times after its defeat in wars with India in 1965 and 1971. Bangladesh split from Pakistan in 1971, demonstrating the unsustainability of the two-nation theory which could unite the Muslims against the Hindus, but not bind them any further.
With the advent of global Islamist movement, Pakistan”s hate against Hindus inevitably turned into hostility against all perceived enemies of Islam. Guruji saw that tendency to hate as the evil propensity of Pakistan and the Islamic Pakistan state itself as the evil. [Bunch of Thoughts p 419-22] Today Islamic Pakistan is seen as the most dangerous place in the world [Forbes Magazine 5.9.2012] and Pakistan state as terror-sponsor [Stephen Schwartz (August19, 2006), A threat to the world. The Spectator; Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism by Daniel Byman, 2005], which the Pakistan President Zardari himself admitted in 2009 [http://ibnlive.in.com]. With 70 per cent of all terror plots detected in the last 10 years being traced to Pakistan, it is clear that “from its founding Pakistan has supported and encouraged jihadi groups”, “to hurt its perennial rival India”: it now “exports jihad” [Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad by Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, May 2010]. The Pakistan state, the successor of the evil Muslim League, which fostered Pakistan”s “evil mind”, now sponsors gobal terror.
Islamic state-nation suppresses cultural diversity, splits the society, divides Pakistan
How the Pakistani political and intellectual establishment promoted the evil mind, namely, the anti-Indian, anti-Hindu agenda is captured by Apoorva Shah, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in the World Affairs magazine [May/June 2011]. Shah says that Pakistan elites” efforts to consolidate Punjabi, Bengali, Sindhi, and Pashtun peoples with distinct cultures, languages and traditions as a unitary nation led the country to greatest crises. The first effort was to impose Urdu as national language, which was resisted by East Pakistan and Sindh. The paper [October 2011] titled Ethnic conflict in Sindh commissioned by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency said: “Portraying Pakistan as an Islamic entity distinct from Hindu India, the official scribes of nationalism saw regional identities as threats to the state. This was not without a cost. Using Islamic bond to justify suppressing the distinctive linguistic and cultural mores of Pakistan”s regional peoples…..had politically divisive effects.” It points out that Pakistan is a ‘State-nation’ where people serve the State, not a ‘Nation-state’ where State serves the people. The cultural difference between Bengal and Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan suppressed by the State-nation of Pakistan eventually, yet inevitably, saw Bangladesh emerge from Pakistan as an independent nation. The same linguistic-cultural suppression is forcing the Pashtoon and Baluchi peoples to fight for freedom. Sindh has not yet reconciled to Urdu. This is what Guruji foresaw in 1965.
Evil education to spread evil mind – concocting history
The next step of the Pakistan ‘state-nation’, according to Shah, was to formulate an education system to consolidate Pakistan as a nation – an evil minded education system to institutionalise hatred against India and Hindus. Apoorva Shah quotes AH Nayyar and Ahmed Salim in their report for the Sustainable Development Policy Institute [SDPI] in Pakistan as saying that the education system in Pakistan was designed “from the very beginning” to reinforce “that Pakistan is an Islamic state rather than a country with majority Muslim population and to produce a singular homogenous majoritarian Muslim identity that could be sharply differentiated from that of India…..suppressing the many different shades within Pakistan”. This was done by concocting history. In SDPI report Salim observes that many Pakistan textbooks declare that Mohammed-bin Qasim who led the Arab conquest of Sindh in early 8th century was the first citizen of Pakistan, a full 12 centuries before Pakistan was born in 1947! Ayesha Jalaal, historian, in her paper published in International Journal of Middle East Studies, points out that one textbook ‘imagins’ history to detect the beginning of Pakistan at Islam’s birth in the Arabian peninsula! Another text claims that Pakistan, “established” in 8th century when Mohammed-bin Qasim occupied Sindh and Multan, occupied Northern India and Bengal in 13th century and, under the Khiljis, moved further to Central India and the Deccan and that its spirit ‘weakened’ when Aurangazeb died! All in sheer desperation to claim “Pakistan’s pre-Islamic past’’ to compete with India”s historic antiquity. Pakistan’s history before 1947 is just Indian-Hindu history. So the need to concoct Pakistan out of it, to sever the Muslims from their Indian-Hindu ancestry.
Evil education to spread anti-Hindu mindset in school children
Besides forging the history, the attempt to consolidate Islamic Pakistan extended to injecting poison in the mind of Pakistan”s budding young against India and the Hindus. The SDPI report says that the Pakistani public education system has developed a strong anti-Indian and anti-Hindu bias in its curriculum. One social studies textbook from the Punjab Textbook Board declared that the Hindus migrating to India were treated nicely, but inhuman treatment was meted out to the Muslim migrants from India. A report of the National Commission for Justice and Peace also found that in textbooks in Pakistan, the word Hindu rarely appears “without an adjective such as politically astute, sly, or manipulative.” Pakistani historian Kursheed Kamal Aziz says that mandatory textbooks amounted to teaching ‘prescribed myths’. After examining 66 textbooks used at various levels of study Aziz argued that the textbooks supported military rule in Pakistan, promoted hatred for Hindus, glorified wars and distorted the pre 1947 history of Pakistan. [Haqqani, Hussain, Pakistan: between mosque and the military”: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace] The SDPI paper says that government run schools do much more damage than the madrasas which have received greater global attention. The official textbooks tell lies, create hatred, inculcate militancy, and much more. The SDPI paper says that four themes emerge strongly from the compulsory textbooks, namely, one, Pakistan is for Muslims alone; two, Islamiat is to be forcibly taught to all students; three, that ideology of Pakistan is to be internalised as faith and hate (is) to be created against Hindus and India; and fourth, students are to be urged to take the path of jihad and shahadat (martyrdom).’’ [Myth and Hate as history. BG Verghese, The Hindu dated 23.6.2004]. This is the curricular transformation of anti-Hindu jihad into global Islamic jihad.
The reform efforts – too late and too little
The Islamic extremist Bhasmasura created by Pakistan, in which curriculum played an important role, now controls or influences two-thirds of Pakistan”s territory [BBC news June 22, 2009]. They have also penetrated the Pakistan state apparatus and the army through the Pakistan spy agency, the ISI. A research paper by Grant Holt, Diplomacy Department, Norwich University Northfield and David H. Gray Peace, War and Defense Programme University of North Carolina titled “A Pakistani Fifth Column? The Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate”s Sponsorship of Terrorism” [published in Global Security Studies, Winter 2011, Volume 2] says: “The ISI has proven it is willing and able to provide aid to terrorist organisations and orchestrate their actions abroad. Its shadowy network has penetrated all ranks of the Pakistani government and military.” The vicious textbooks of Pakistan, which promoted jihad against India and Hindus and later against all non-Muslims, have attracted world”s attention after 9/11 terror attack on US. The result. Pakistan is now forced to review the textbooks. The Pakistan government’s official website owning the Hindu past is Pakistan’s first admission that hatred against India has been counter-productive. Now the different provinces are being forced to recast the textbooks. But this is too little and too late. But Pakistan cheats the world and does not really change the books. [Sun News. Fox News North. dt 28.12.1011 6pm]. The Pakistan state-nation is now virtually a prisoner of the extremists. The textbooks designed to spread the ‘evil mind’ against Hindus, connect the Muslims with the invaders and disconnect them from their forefathers who connect them to India and Hindus, are still being read by young Pakistani children. As Guruji said that the issue is evil persons and not just evil mind which resides only in evil persons. The Pakistan state-nation is under the control of the evil-minded persons whom Guruji had
mentioned.
Pakistan should disintegrate, said Guruji. It will, according to experts now
In the year 1965 itself Guruji foresaw the disintegration of Pakistan and with that, he said, the evil mind would be annihilated. With the Punjabi Muslims dominating the state machinery in Pakistan, he foresaw Bengalis, Balochs and Pashtoons revolting sooner or later. [Bunch of Thoughts p421]. Indeed, Bengal revolted within six years and in 1972, Bangladesh was born. Now, Pakistan”s Interior Minister says, on August 2, 2012 – decades after Guruji – that Balochistan Liberation Army has drawn a roadmap to disintegrate Pakistan. The Pashtoons are fighting for Pakhtoonistan. Ralph Peters, military analyst and author, told the US Congressional Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on February 8, 2012 that Pakistan should be allowd to disintegrate and Pashtuns rioting for separate Pakhtoonistan and Balochs figthing for freedom should be allowed to have their way. He said that Pakistan’s borders are artificial and colonially determined, not natural and do not match the cultures of the peoples bound by them; therefore, it is foolish for the US to assist Pakistan to defend them. He charged Pakistan”s rulers as “violent oppressors of minorities”, “blackmailers” and with “helping the enemines of Pakistan to kill US soldiers”. In his book Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, David E. Sanger says that the US President Obama fears Pakistan would disintegrate, which he regards as the greatest security concern of US. The disintegration that Guruji wanted expedited for the good of the world, is precisely what Ralph Peters has now counselled the US Congress some 47 years later after Guruji.
Comments