Don’t wink at Pakistan

So, when Powell predicted ‘‘rivers of blood’’ in his notorious 1968 speech he could not have anticipated Leeds to be the crucible for 7/7. Muslims from East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) were jumping ships and, on occasion, bringing in one or two cases of smallpox. Since the English knew nothing of East Bengalis, they too were placed under the general list ‘‘Indians’’.

By opening the first Indian restaurant on Old Brompton Road, Mahfouz Ali started a flood of Sylhetis branching out to all corners of Britain opening hundreds of ‘‘Indian’’ restaurants. Only after a Sunday Times investigation in 1969 did the Englishman realise that the ‘‘Indian’’ food he ate was cooked by immigrants from one district of East Bengal, Sylhet, known for the indifference of its cuisine!

The profile of the south Asian immigrant in Britain remained that of an ‘‘Indian’’ until, gradually, Pakistani assertiveness began to register. As long as the South Asian presence was innocuous, sometimes even pleasant, they were all perceived to be ‘‘Indians’’. But when the Pakistanis went out of their way to establish their separate identity, a rash of street-corner ‘‘bash ups’’ made frequent appearance in the tabloids.

By the ’70s ‘‘Paki bashing’’ was common. Since many Indians also looked like ‘‘Pakis’’, they were often at the receiving end, by mistake. But there never came into use a term like ‘‘Indi bashing’’ or ‘‘Hindu bashing’’.

Stories would appear in the London Evening News that ‘‘Daljit Singh, Balbir Singh, Gurmeet Singh, three Pakistanis, were arrested at Dover border’’. Next morning’s Times would correct the story — the three were from Indian Punjab. When placed in embarrassing circumstances, the three, secure in their nationality, told a lie because they did not wish to ‘‘disgrace India’’. Pakistanis, 90 per cent of them from Mirpur in Kashmir, would stamp their feet and assert their new found nationhood.

After a hard day’s work, the Indian Punjabi would socialise with his English mate at the only place the Englishman meets friends — the Pub. Indeed, the Punjabi would drink him under the table. The Punjabi was fun, strong of elbow and stout of heart.

The Mirpur ‘‘Paki’’ never turned up at the Pub — religious taboo. He refrained from the other English neighbourhood institution — the butcher shop. He opened halal meat shops. The Indian brought his family with him. The man from Mirpur left his wife in the village, which did not come in the way of his taking British openness for license.

While social tensions simmered between the Mirpur Paki and the British at ground level, the British government’s favoured state on the sub-continent was Pakistan, in the context of the Cold War. Terrorism in Kashmir or Punjab was seen by the British (and the Americans) through the Cold War prism.

This was the state of play when General Zia-ul-Haq, after hanging Bhutto, made himself available to execute the US-Saudi plan to nurture an intolerant variety of Wahabi Islam in Afghanistan with two aims — to fight the Soviets and to be a Wahabi bulwark against the Shia Ayatullahs who had come to power in Iran. Zia had a third aim which the US and Britain ignored. There were more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. The survival and prosperity of these Muslims in a tolerant, secular society would threaten the theocratic state which in food, customs, music was in a large measure part of the sub-continental civilisation. An Arabised Islam in Pakistan would tear it away from the Sufi-Bhakti drenched composite culture of India. The same seeds of Wahabism would be sown in Kashmir. Kashmiri Sufism had to be diluted. Implanted Wahabism in Kashmir, helped by training camps in Pakistan, would keep the Indian state engaged in low intensity conflict.

This would have the potential of disrupting Hindu-Muslim harmony in India. There were enough fanatics on the Hindu fringe to take up the project at their end, possibly unwittingly. Muslim militancy in Pakistan would feed Hindu extremism in India and the other way around.

You, in Washington and London, have for twenty years promoted (during the Cold War) and tolerated (by negligence since) policies in this part of the world of which the three young men from Leeds are only the tiniest consequence. Logically, more must follow.

It is, of course, foolish to imagine that General Pervez Musharraf can undo in two years what you have nurtured for twenty. Full marks to him that he has tried after 9/11.

But there is another catch. Musharraf is ‘‘indispensable’’ to your purposes in Afghanistan. This places on him great pressure to ‘‘deliver’’ in Afghanistan. But the same ‘‘indispensability’’ gives him room for manoeuvre in coping with you. And now that your tails are burning in Iraq, your anxiety to stabilise Afghanistan may enlarge his ‘‘indispensability’’.

You may, in your state of funk, lose sight of transgressions across the LoC to insulate Musharraf from internal pressures. This would be a fatal mistake. Remember, 500 million Muslims live in South Asia — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives — more than in all of Middle East. Moderate these Muslim by harmonising the Indo-Pak equation. Reared in a tolerant civilisation, they will be an engine for moderating the Muslim world.

Democracy is a function of the fundamental sanity of India with its countless checks and balances. India will lurch forward with its elephantine tread. But if your limited attention span restricts you to firefighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, keeping subcontinental priorities to another day, you may lose control in the country you consider indispensable — Pakistan.

Write to saeednaqvi@expressindia.com