November 24,
2006
Quantum Note
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
It seems that the proverbial short memory of North Americans has crossed the ocean to arrive in the land of the pure. This is the only way one can explain how a blushless Tony Blair can fly from London to dine in Lahore with those who had been declared violators of the constitution by him merely seven short years ago. Worse yet, Blair had the cheek to deliver a sermon on democracy while a ruling military general sat next to him. This can only be explained by invoking a collective amnesia which wiped away the memory of that day, seven short years ago, when this same Tony Blair was still Prime Minister of the little kingdom, which was once so large that sun never set upon it. On that day, this very same man had his spokesman “strongly condemn” the “unconstitutional coup” staged by those with whom he dined in Lahore.
Another way to explain the inexplicable is to elicit the illogical (and immoral) brute force of power and then add a cornucopia of catch phrases: the changed world situation; the partnership against terrorism; the general’s willingness to support those wishing to install democracies in the Muslim world by way of cruise missiles and carpet bombings.
Invoking these, however, yields a world where the possibilities of hope have been destroyed. If brute force and the arbitrary law of necessity are all that remains in the world, then no logic makes sense. Both the high priest and the murderous robber have equal rights and can do what they will, for then everything is permitted. And if matters have reached such a stage, then there is really no point in wasting ink and paper; one should then just set the pen on some lone tree in a desert and head for the nearest cave.
Yet it is not really Blair who is the cause of this despair, for no one expected anything different from him. It is the people who listened to his sermon in Lahore. Is there no one left in that city—to where sages used to travel from distant lands to lives of truth, virtue, and culture—who could have stood up during Blair’s joint press conference with the general to repeat his words back to him? Could no newspaper run a short clipping the next day, highlighting the statement of a democracy-trotting Blair and his home secretary, on October 13, 1999? Could no TV commentator quote from an old newspaper the words of Robin Cook, Blair’s foreign secretary, speaking at the European Union summit in Tampere, Finland, the day after the coup: “Pakistan will be suspended from the Commonwealth until democracy is restored. The bottom line is that martial law has been declared in Pakistan in all but name. In these circumstances it is important the rest of the world makes it clear that we deplore the overthrow of a democratic government and we deplore the failure to offer a democratic process to restore to Pakistan a government accountable to its people, elected within the terms of its constitution.”
Or is it that the Raj has been re-established and we are now witnessing in real life what Lord Macaulay had dreamt of doing in the colony which his masters had established in the Indian subcontinent: “to create a class of person who would be Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”
One can dig deeper and look at the legacy of the Raj which looms large, not only in Pakistan but in all colonies. The British and the French may have gone through the motions of departing from their colonies, but they have not left in reality. From the administrative structures to the systems of education, and from the general nature of society to the little cliques of rulers they left behind, the Raj lingers on.
The legacy of the Raj is no where as strong and as well-established as in one institution it created: the military. All the colonizers (the French, the English, the Italians, the Russians) took great care in establishing this institution in the colonies. This instrument of control was established from the ground up on the pattern of their own armies. Thus military academies, training process, the strict authority of the ranks, the command level—even the uniforms were a replica of the colonizing armies.
Given this background, it is not astonishing that from one end of the former colonies to the other, it is military generals who now are the real rulers of the erstwhile colonies whether directly or indirectly. But even in this otherwise logical consequence of the legacy of the Raj, there is a fundamental difference: no one can imagine a British or French general staging a coup against his or her government, whereas no one can think of a military general in the former colonies not hoping to stage a coup.
This historical background explains but does not justify the perpetual rule of generals in lands as far apart as Algeria and Pakistan. What may explain this state of affairs is the possibility that perhaps Lord Macaulay’s nefarious plan was not merely a figment of his racist mind; it really succeeded in creating a polity in which no one can stand up to remind Mr. Blair of his own statements, delivered to the entire world with so much fanfare just seven short years ago.
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