Subcontinent’s fascist nightmare

Unlike the post-Independence Indian liberal, the Pakistani had to actually fight the most ruthless despots to earn his democracy and paid for it with incarceration, lashes, exile and worse. Why is he now ruing, and so bitterly, the fact that Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League (PML) have won at least this round against the establishment, the President, the Army and the Chief Justice?

The liberal Pakistani media has been loaded with the same lament: why did the Army allow this to happen? Why did it not intervene? There are even dark suggestions that the Army could not have done it, because it has weakened as an institution in the post-Zia years, that perhaps the chief, General Jahangir Karamat, is weak because he has a secular image, or worse, that he is a closet Ahmedia and thus an apostate in the Islamic system. It really doesn’t matter if any of this is true or not. What’s important is the fact that the entire Pakistani liberal set, which fought the Army for over two decades, was now imploring it to intervene and is now bitter at its failure to rise to its call. The Army’s intervention, the argument goes, would have been constitutional, and prevented the rise of fascist, right-wing forces represented by Nawaz Sharif and his PML to such unbridled power, destroying in the process the troika (the Army, the President and the Prime Minister) which traditionally held the delicate balance of power.

If this, the liberals mourning the victory of elected forces over the old establishment sounds odd, look at parallels elsewhere. In Turkey as well as Algeria, supposedly liberal, secular establishments have defied popular electoral verdicts to keep the right wing (in both cases more to the religious right than in Pakistan) out of power. Particularly in Algeria, a heavy price has already been paid for such fascism in the name of liberalism.In both, largely Islamic countries, the relatively secular armies have intervened to keep the elected religious right out of power. In Pakistan you have the liberals wanting an Army that usually stands far to the right of even the religious right to intervene and “save” democracy even if it means dismissing a government elected with a sweeping majority. And to which court do we, Indian liberals, appeal now that the Congress party has scored such a stunning series of self-goals to bring the BJP on the threshold of power?

The liberal dilemma is the same on either side: if democracy is meant to be the fount of liberalism, how can it bring such right-wing fascists into power? The Muslim League, for so long the hand-maiden of the Army, and the BJP, that cunning upstart sired by the RSS what kind of democracy brings these types into power? When it does so, it must mean that it is so weakened through intellectual subversion and infiltration, its institutions so compromised and its foundations so shaken that its very legitimacy must be called into question. So please call out the Army.

While the Pakistani liberal can still wish and hope that the generals, presumably smarting under Nawaz’s insults, would hit back soon enough and restore the “honour” of democracy even if it means reverting it to its bonsai status ordained by that great visionary called Zia-ul-Haq, we can have no such hope. Neither this Army, nor the judiciary would move to keep the BJP out of power if the voters, fed up of the Congress’s corruption and the United Front’s confusion, decide on a fundamental change this February. For many of us, this is the ultimate liberal nightmare, and how are we going to deal with it?The encouraging lesson from Pakistan is that the true majesty of a democratic system lies in the manner it exercises a moderating influence over the most extreme forces of the right as well as the left.

Under Zia, the fundamentalists were dominant. But, three elections later in 1993, the religious right got just six per cent of the vote. In 1997, its leading light, the Jamaat-i-Islami did not even participate in the elections, so sure it was of an impending rout. The Muslim League under Nawaz, consecrated by its third electoral victory in 12 years (presuming that Junejo’s partyless government in 1985 consisted mostly of the Leaguies) has behaved much more responsibly than Benazir Bhutto’s two “liberal” governments. A small but significant footnote is the fact that it was this Muslim League that reverted to Sunday as the weekly holiday, reversing the Friday fiat issued by none else than Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s “left-wing” regime.

Or see how, closer home, a mere whiff of an ascent to power through the system has moderated the Hindutva forces. It is too early to suggest yet that the Shiv Sena has joined the ranks of civilised, modern political parties but has it spewed the same venom against the Muslims as it did in the past? The BJP’s trek towards Raisina Hill has been accompanied by a simultaneous distancing from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Where has the Bajrang Dal meanwhile disappeared? Why is the mask called Vajpayee so important to the BJP? Why is it jettisoning Ayodhya, the uniform civil code, the abrogation of Article 370 and so on? Even the Left was forced to moderate its disastrous economics under the UF banner as it put its signature to the Common Minimum programme.

The argument is not that the BJP has become a perfect and pristine symbol of constitutional secularism after the prolonged Ganga-snan of mainstream politics. Nor is it that we must accept such forces in power for ever since that might be the only way of moderating their behaviour. The point is, the intolerance of the liberal is a shame on democracy which must provide for the checks and balances and also the institutions to bring in the necessary correctives and, ultimately, political change.

The problem with the secular and liberal Indian is that barring the blip of the Emergency he has never been challenged by the establishment. The Congress wasn’t perfect but it was seen pretty much as a part of the liberal stream. The roles have now been reversed and if the forces of the right continue in their march to power the Indian liberal will face his first real challenge from the establishment. There is nothing to suggest yet that he will prove more equal to the challenge than his Pakistani counterpart.