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profile Why should you
study linguistics Yeh
Woh issue Stirring
the political cauldron Sceptic’s
Diary
profile From the day he
replaced Mian Tufail Mohammad as the third amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI)
Pakistan on October 7, 1987 till he was succeeded by Munawwar Hassan on March
29, 2009, Qazi Hussain Ahmed unsuccessfully tried to turn JI Pakistan into a
populist party and led it on the jihadi path in Kashmir. He was born on January 12,
1938 in Nowshehra in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He received early education at home.
Then he went to Islamia College Peshawar. Later, he graduated in Geography
from the University of Peshawar. He worked as lecturer in the Jehanzeb
College in Swat for three years. The ruler of Swat expelled him for
subversive activities after which he decided to do his own business. As a
businessman, he became involved in business politics and was elected vice
president of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Qazi Hussain Ahmed was a
descendant of Seljoki Sheikh Hazrat Akhund Adeen who was a teacher of Hazrat
Kaka Sahib. Akhund Adeen’s shrine is in Akora Khattak. The descendants of
Sheikh Akhund Adeen Seljoki use the title of qazi or qazian. Many of them
live in Ziarat Kaka Sahib where Qazi Hussain Ahmed was born. He was the last
of the ten siblings. He has two sons and two daughters, one of whom, Raheela
Qazi, joined politics and became member of the National Assembly. He joined Islami
Jamiat-e-Talaba, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, in
college and moved on to become a member of Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan after
finishing his studies. He quickly rose in the hierarchy of the
Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan. He served as secretary and later as amir of JI
Pakistan in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. In 1978, he became the central
secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. He was elected amir of
Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan in 1987 for the first time. He got re-elected four
more times; in 1992, 1994, 1999 and 2003. He did not choose to run in 2008
when Syed Munawwar Hassan was elected the new amir of the Party.
Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan got him elected a member of the Senate in 1986 for
six years. He was re-elected in 1992 but resigned in 1996. He was elected a
member of the National Assembly in 2002 and served as the parliamentary
leader of the Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). As amir of the
Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, he unsuccessfully tried to turn it into a
populist party. As part of his efforts in this regard, he helped found
Shabab-e-Milli and patronised Pasban. However, the party’s slogan,
“Zalimo! Qazi aa raha hai” became a joke when Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan
failed to improve its electoral standing in the 1990s. He served as the
president of MMA from October 10, 2002 to February 18, 2008. He died of a heart attack
on January 6 at the age of 74 year. He replaced Mian Tufail
Mohammad as the third amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan on October 7,
1987 and was succeeded by Hassan on March 29, 2009. Mian Mohammad Tufail, the
second amir of the Jamaat, put the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan on the jihadi
path by joining the Afghan jihad. Qazi Hussain Ahmed took the party further
on the jihadi path in Kashmir. One of the most important
reasons for his election as the amir of JI was his close connections with the
Afghan Mujahideen. Under Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Hizbul Mujahideen, the armed
wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, emerged as the biggest Islamist
militant organisation in the 1990s. Hizbul Mujahideen is said to have killed
thousands of Hindus and fellow Muslims in Kashmir. During the Afghan jihad,
Qazi Hussain Ahmed turned the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan into a virtual
subsidiary of the ISI, which managed the jihad in Afghanistan. He continued
this policy during the Kashmir jihad. When Khost fell, Qazi Hussain Ahmed
followed ISI Chief General Asad Durrani there. He readily played the
go-between between Ahmed Shah Massoud and Hekmatyar on behalf of Pakistani
security agencies when the Mujahideen infighting started. In the 1990 Middle East
conflict, JI under Qazi Hussain Ahmed followed General Mirza Aslam Beg in
supporting Saddam Hussain of Iraq against Saudi Arabia and broke the 50-year
old relationship with the Saudi kingdom. This partly contributed to the
weakening of the Jamaat as the Saudis diverted their funds to other Islamist
parties. However, both Mian Tufail
and Qazi Hussain Ahmed have done more harm than good to the Jamaat-e-Islami
Pakistan. Their policies of following the path of jihad and becoming closer
to the military establishment has badly damaged the JI as the foremost
politico-religious party in Pakistan. In 1980, when the Afghan jihad started,
JI was the principal politico-religious party in Pakistan. In the last 30
years, it has slowly but surely lost its importance in the Pakistani
politics. Qazi Hussain Ahmed will be remembered as someone whose policies led
to the downfall of the Jamaat. Current amir of the JI
Munawwar Hassan, has been trying to undo the legacy of Qazi Hussain Ahmed but
is unable to regain the old standing. It is highly unlikely for the Jamaat to
emerge once again as a leading politico-religious party in future in the
presence of politico-jihadi parties. In an effort to revive the
party, Munawwar Hassan is taking it in another extremist and dangerous
direction. He recently justified the Taliban’s attacks on the Pakistani
armed forces. In the Express TV talk show ‘To the Point’ with Shahzeb
Khanzada on November 1, 2011, he justified attacks on the Pakistani armed
forces by the Pakistani Taliban. He argued that the Pakistani Army had
promised the Mujahideen that it would not follow the US policy. Since the
Pakistan Army had broken its promise, the TTP is justified in carrying out
its attacks on the Pakistani armed forces. This policy may not bring back the
Jamaat’s lost glory but will definitely project its image as a party
against the state of Pakistan.
Why
should you study linguistics This piece is
addressed to students and it is part of my efforts of a quarter century to
promote Linguistics because Pakistan is the only country in South Asia which
is ignoring it. Let me begin from the
September of 1987, when I first embarked on this mission of introducing this
subject to Pakistani students. It was in then that I became professor and
head of the department of English Literature in the University of Azad Jammu
and Kashmir in Muzaffarabad. I had begun my academic career as an associate
professor of English literature after my doctorate on the British novel in
1985 but had begun to develop interest in language (at that time the English
language, of course) as I lost interest in the literature of a misty land
seven seas away. So I started an experiment
which changed my academic career for ever. I sat down in the
picturesque rest house with the river Neelam’s sonorous music in my ears
and wrote a paper suggesting that English Literature be replaced by
Linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT) at the masters level. The fact is that I was not
too partial to ELT at all. But had to swallow the bitter pill because the
British Council and the American Centre both were funding it and promoting
it. This compromise was a tactical genuflection in that direction because I
knew I would never be able to attract good faculty to Muzaffarabad and it was
both just and pragmatic to get the British Council to send our existing
faculty for higher degrees to the U.K. I also wrote the outline of
courses single-handedly and the new M.A. in Linguistics and ELT kicked off
within three months. But without any formal permission, the teaching had
already started in October. As I had foreseen, the Briitsh Council sent three
of my colleagues to Britain for degrees within two years. They reasoned that I should
go — if go I must — for post-doctoral research but not for masters. I
remained obstinate about studying linguistics and that too in Scotland that
was the place for modern linguistics. At last, they sent me to do an M.Litt
(just a fancy name for an M.A.) to Glasgow. And now I had a degree of
sorts in linguistics proper. So, back in Pakistan, I
joined the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) in 1990 with the aim of introducing
linguistics at the Masters level. But this was easier said than done. The Anthropology department
offered me a course in anthropological linguistics and the Institute of
Pakistan Studies (which paid my salary) also held courses in Pakistani
linguistics (a fancy name for the languages of Pakistan). But nothing worked. Students want a degree with
linguistics written on it. The last thing they want is working hard on a
difficult subject and then getting nothing for their pains except a lower
Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) since the courses they did were
difficult. Meanwhile, I kept doing
research on language politics, sociolinguistics and linguistic history. But
since all these writings were related to South Asia, I got invited to centres
of South Asian Studies and Oriental Studies, and got deeper and deeper into
Pakistan’s linguistic and political history. The dream of getting
linguistics on its feet in Pakistan remained as elusive as ever. At last in 2010, the
Department of Linguistics was established in QAU. It was 20 years too late. Meanwhile, many
institutions had started giving degrees in linguistics. These were generally
run by people trained in ELT and offered variants of ELT and what they called
applied linguistics which, again, was nothing but ELT with a few crumbs from
linguistics thrown in order to lure students. At the personal level I was
about to retire from QAU so the department was too late from a personal point
of view also. But, as the poet Pope has said, ‘hope springs eternal in the
human breast’. After QAU, I came to
Beaconhouse National University in 2011 and this university allowed me to
establish a department of linguistics in 2012. The department is there and
in Lahore, the city of colleges. Now let us see what use our
students make of it. The first thing students
should know is what they are expected to study. As linguistics is the science
of language, they should not think they will be taught any particular
language. If they want to study Urdu, Arabic or English they should go
elsewhere. They should study linguistics if they want to understand how the
sounds of human language are produced by the mouth (phonetics); what rules
govern these sounds (phonology); how words are formed (morphology); what
rules govern the making of sentences (syntax); how language is used in
society (socio and anthropological linguistics); how languages make sense
(semantics) and how language is processed in the mind (neuro and
psycho-linguistics); how computers can be used for understanding languages
and vice versa (computational linguistics); writing systems and even animal
communication. The subject has both social science and natural science
components. It even has a gift for literary people — stylistics. But this
gift is used more by media people since they dissect the style of news items
and speeches and what not. So, if students go shopping for a genuine
linguistics degree, they should see if the subjects mentioned above are being
offered. If they are not, they will get a degree with ‘linguistics’
written on it but not the genuine article. Secondly, please understand
that nobody can write a proper research thesis on linguistics without at
least a masters degree in the basics mentioned above. The other thing students
should know is what jobs they will get after they have a proper linguistics
degree. If I say linguistics, like all subjects, gratifies one’s
intellectual curiosity and is fun, you will not be satisfied. Well, I myself
am in academia because for me it is a hobby and I cannot think of a life of
more pleasure than it but let me give you the type of answer you want. Yes,
jobs are important. Indeed, most people study not for the fun of it but
because they want to make themselves fit for a good life. So, where is the market for
linguists? The largest market is academia — universities. This is a big
market and an expanding one. While businesses close and
people are thrown out of jobs, they want to go to universities to get better
qualifications. Universities keep growing. And this is true of Pakistan also.
India, Sri Lanka and even Nepal have several departments of linguistics and
Pakistan is getting into the business too. So those who get their M.A. in
linguistics proper will be the early birds. They will get the jobs. But this is not all. Have
you seen machine translation; robots who understand your speech; artificially
intelligent robots; e-mail in Urdu and other languages? What kind of
knowledge do you think is required for these miracles? Of course,
computational linguistics, phonology, semantics etc. You can be hired by
think-tanks as well as Microsoft. You begin by getting Masters in the
subject. Also, suppose you can cure language defects and problems like the
one in the film ‘Tare zameen par’? And if you begin with studying
neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics, you work in think-tanks, NGOs and
media outfits analysing the style of speeches. You can conduct language
surveys too. Do you know that only foreigners have done this work so far in
Pakistan. The best known names are those of George Grierson during the
British era and the Summer Institute of Linguistics since 1990s in Pakistan. So, linguists find plenty
of jobs. Language is a mystery. It
is at the centre of all activities. Although jobs will always be the
pragmatic imperative for most people, may I suggest you study this subject
for the insights it can give you. Maybe it changes your life and the lives of
your fellow human beings.
Violating a
person’s body says something about the individual violator; the public
response to violence against a person defines a society and decides its
tolerance for abuse. When it comes to violent
crimes therefore, numbers mean very little. The statistics of rape for
instance, tell one story and the public response, quite another. According to
Aurat Foundation, four women out of every 100,000 Pakistanis became a victim
of violent crimes in 2011. Rape and sexual assault makes up half of this
number. When compared with United Nations’ figures (2010) for countries
that usually rank in the top 20 in terms of quality of life (Sweden had 63
women raped in every hundred thousand of its population, UK 29 and United
States 27) Pakistan’s rape statistics seem rather benign. To the contrary, the lower
figure is misleading. Islamic Republic of
Pakistan has thus far lived up to the epithet of ‘Islamic’ simply by
refusing to admit that crimes like rape and child abuse exist in the society.
No government agency monitors sex crimes, and therefore no official data
exists, and no meaningful policy is formulated, much less implemented, to
protect our children, and women. Meanwhile, a non government organisation,
Sahil has compiled data to show that on average three children are kidnapped
and six are sexually abused, every day. These are very conservative
estimates as they are based on reports appearing in daily newspapers. A large
number of sexual abuse cases are not reported to police and not all cases
reported to police find space in a newspaper. The state can therefore find
reasons to pat itself on the back every time Pakistan shows up in the various
rankings as a country with negligible incidence of rape and child abuse (as
is the incidence of drug abuse, AIDS, domestic violence etc). The official
sweeping of heinous crime under the carpet of indifference for decades has
had disastrous effect on Pakistani society. Child sexual abuse is on the
increase, year after year, and so is violence against women, as Pakistanis
care less and less about the incidence of violent abuse against more
vulnerable sections of the society. In the last few weeks
alone, a nine year old girl was gang raped in Rahim Yar Khan, a six year old
girl in Umer Kot and a nine years old boy in Bahawalpur. Do we see any
outrage? Every day, every city witnesses more than one public protest
demonstrations against gas and electricity shortages, layoffs, privatisation
of state enterprise, inflation and what not. Who is protesting against the
worst crime against humanity? How many consider rape the worst crime? That is what distinguishes
us from nations with visibly much higher rates of sex crimes. In Western
societies rape is considered much more reprehensible a crime than murder, and
a child rapist is considered the lowest of the low and gets the longest jail
term from courts of law. When a convicted child rapist completes his or her
sentence, they are not allowed by local communities to live among them and
often have to change their identities and resettle in a different city or
country. The rape survivors – whether adult or children – usually get the
community’s sympathy and support through mass media as well as little
gestures like total strangers sending flowers for an abuse survivor. Even if
there’s nothing else that unites a community, sex abuse does. In the Islamic Republic of
Pakistan we keep our eyes shut tight to sex crimes and thereby encourage
animalistic behaviour of all sorts against our own children and women. We’d
rather kill the raped rather than punish the rapist. A girl in Sargodha
committed suicide a month or so after she was gang raped. As the last note
she left behind explained, she did not kill herself over the rape incident
but over the taunts of women in her neighbourhood. NGOs working against such
abuses often face hurdles from within the society they are trying to protect.
Parents, teachers, and religious figures routinely block attempts at raising
general awareness of, and empowering vulnerable sections against abuse. Indian society is not much
different from ours in this regard. They have woken up lately though. It took
five men and a boy to rape a young woman in a moving bus in Delhi last month
– before throwing out on the road her abused and wounded body to die
eventually in an overseas hospital – for Indian men and women, young and
old, traditional and modern, to come out on the streets. What will it take to wake
us Pakistanis? masudalam@yahoo.com
issue News about the
death of two Indian soldiers at the Line of Control in Kashmir on Jan 8
triggered anger in India. Yes, a Pakistani soldier had been killed just two
days earlier. But his body had not been mutilated. He had not been beheaded.
For that is what Indian reports said, creating hysteria and leading to the
beating of war drums: the bodies of their jawans had been mutilated, one of
their heads was missing, and Pakistan was responsible (small mercy,
authorities asked Indian journalists not to use the word ‘beheaded’ but
‘decapitation’). India
seemed to erupt in a storm of anger, outrage, and indignation, betrayal and
hurt, and calls for retaliation against Pakistan. Understandable. Imagine the
reaction in Pakistan had it been the other way around. But things are not always
what they seem. The only facts out there were that there was an escalation of
tensions along the LoC, Lance-Naik Aslam of Pakistan was killed on Jan 6, two
Indian soldiers died on Jan 8 (at the time of writing, on Jan 10, another
Pakistani soldier has been reported killed). The initial Indian army
statement on the Jan 8 incident states that, “Pak army troops, having taken
advantage of thick fog & mist in the forested area, were moving towards
own posts when an alert area domination patrol spotted and engaged the
intruders. The fire fight between Pak and own troops continued for
approximately half an hour after which the intruders retreated back towards
their side of Line of Control. Two soldiers Lance Naik Hemraj and Lance Naik
Sudhakar Singh laid down their lives while fighting the Pak troops.” (NDTV,
Jan 8, 2013) “Can
you spot the word ‘beheaded’ or ‘decapitated’ or ‘headless’ or
even ‘mutilated’ in that statement? Neither can I,” writes Delhi-based
journalist Shivam Vij in his courageous and nuanced article ‘Was an Indian
soldier decapitated at the Line of Control or not?’ (Kafila.org, Jan 10,
2013). A Reuters report of Jan 9
carries a denial from an Indian army spokesman about the decapitation: “The
body of one of the soldiers was found mutilated in a forested area on the
side controlled by India, Rajesh K. Kalia, spokesman for the Indian army’s
Northern Command, said. However, he denied Indian media reports that one body
had been decapitated and another had its throat slit.” The Indian army
subsequently said that post mortems will determine the cause of decapitation
and mutilation, whether firearms or other weapons. So the hype about the
nature of the mutilation and who committed it is based on speculation “It is almost certainly a
retaliation for what happened in Charonda”, a military official in New
Delhi said. “This kind of thing has often happened in the past, though it
hasn’t got quite so much media attention.” (The Hindu, Jan 10, 2013) My first response to news
of escalating tensions: Predictably something nasty happens between India and
Pakistan just as goodwill is at its peak. Vested interests don’t want
peace. My second: I have my
differences with Pakistan army but find it hard to believe that Pakistan army
soldiers would mutilate, behead bodies. That’s what Taliban do. Not that the Pakistan army
is incapable of it. Men in conflict situations, no matter what their country
or religion, are capable of barbarism, contrary to the assertions of those
who insist that ‘our men’ are ‘professional’ and would never stoop to
such acts – remember American soldiers in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan,
Pakistani soldiers (1971) Indian soldiers (Kashmir, Manipur). Indians bring up the
torture and death of Capt. Saurabh Kalia and his five men in Kargil, 1999.
Pakistan insisted that only non-state actors were involved (a claim later
proved to be false) and refused to receive the bodies killed in the fight,
that the Indians buried. But on the other side too, there were atrocities
which came to light later. Barkha Dutt <https://www.facebook.com/barkha.dutt.92?group_id=0>
recounts how a colonel showed her, behind the army’s administrative
offices, through a peephole: ‘…a
head, the disembodied face of a slain soldier nailed onto a tree. “The boys
got it as a gift for the brigade,” said the colonel, softly, but proudly.
Before I could react, the show was over. A faded gunny bag appeared from
nowhere, shrouded the soldier’s face, the brown of the bag now merging
indistinguishably with the green of the leaves. Minutes later, we walked past
the same tree where the three soldiers who had earlier unveiled the victory
trophy were standing.’ (“Confessions of a War Reporter”,
Himal Southasian, June 2001) She decided not to report
this “at least not while the war was still on”. A Pakistani reporter may
have made the same choice in that situation. But there is public outcry only
when something becomes public knowledge. We can’t afford to be
‘holier than thou’ here. Let’s condemn the barbarity and expose them
when possible, no matter who commits it. But also, let’s not jump to
conclusions about who did it, until we have the facts. Consider the timing of the
latest incident, just days after the Pakistan army’s paradigm shift
acknowledging that internal threats are a greater danger than danger from
India. Indian troops saw her
departure as “highlighting vulnerabilities” in their defences and began
constructing observation bunkers around Charonda. Pakistani troops protested
the construction as a violation of the terms of the LoC ceasefire of 2003.
Indian commanders conceded that the construction was in violation of the
ceasefire but refused to stop work, reports Swami. Tensions began to escalate.
Pakistan “made announcements over a public address system, demanding that
Indian troops end the construction work”, then began shelling Indian
positions. The firing killed three villagers. Occasional shots continued to
be fired in the weeks leading up to the New Year. On Jan 6, Indian troops
responded aggressively. Pakistan says its post was raided by Indian troops.
India denies this. The fact is that the firing killed a Pakistani soldier and
led to a raid from the Pakistan side, killing two Indian soldiers. The attacking party was
reportedly dressed in black dungarees like those worn by Pakistan’s Special
Service Group (SSG). This does not prove that SSG’s involvement. Taliban
have attacked military posts in Pakistan wearing Pakistani military uniforms.
The attackers could also be
‘irregulars from the LeT’ says a report in DNA — LeT chief Hafeez Saeed
has been raising ‘Border Action Guards’ to attack Indian troops on the
LoC (‘Uri commander’s forceful retaliation led to beheadings?’, DNA
Exclusive, Jan 10, 2013). The Pakistan army no longer
controls these non-state actors, once its ‘strategic assets’, who have
been targeting Pakistani civilians and soldiers, causing over 40,000
casualties over the past decade. Amidst the cacophony of
sensationalist warmongering, it is reassuring to hear sane voices. “It brings them
(Pakistan) no gain whatsoever,” the Indian foreign minister Salman Khurshid
told Barkha Dutt on NDTV. “It’s a clear attempt to derail the dialogue. I
think it is important in the long term that what has happened should not be
escalated.” On Jan 15, parts of the new
visa regime are expected to go into effect as planned, allowing senior
citizens to cross over the Wagah-Attari border without visas. Indian and
Pakistani citizens have issued joint statements urging governments to not
allow the peace process to be derailed. Thoughtful and civil, even if heated,
discussions are taking place on facebook and twitter. That remains the bottom
line. Those who want good relations need to be like the deaf frog, who
reached the top of the pole while the others fell off — he kept his focus
on the goal, unable to hear the cacophony of nay-sayers shouting that what he
was attempting was impossible.
Stirring the
political cauldron Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri
gave a three week deadline to the government to establish an honest and
independent body that will introduce electoral reforms and pave the way for
free and fair elections. He threatened to start a long march of four million
towards Islamabad if his demands were not fulfilled by January 14, 2013. He
termed the electoral system of Pakistan responsible for reinforcing corrupt
and influential politicians again and again in Pakistan. He wants to put the
next general elections in Pakistan on hold for some months and ‘an
honest’ government to be set up to reform the current corrupt electoral
system of Pakistan. He is not the only one
raising voice against the electoral system of Pakistan.Imran Khan has also
said several times that without a neutral interim government, the Election
Commission of Pakistan (ECP) cannot conduct free and fair elections. Lately,
after the nt by-elections in Punjab, the PML-Q also started questioning THE
ECP’s capability to hold free and fair elections while The MQM has also
raised serious objections on ECP’s decision to delimit Karachi’s
constituencies. MQM leader Farooq Sattar, reportedly, levelled allegations of
bias against Secretary ECP Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan on December 27, 2012, and
demanded that he should be removed from his position. He said that the
commission’s secretary had wanted to alter the MQM’s mandate in Karachi.
MQM has already endorsed Dr Qadri’s agenda and also promised to take part
in his planned long march towards Islamabad. Political analysts also
question the electoral system of Pakistan which according to them needs a lot
of improvement but they believe that democratic process and elections should
not be postponed. “There is no ideal electoral system in the world. Reforms
are part of the process and to put election on hold in the name of reforming
election system would not be a good omen,” says senior political analyst
Suhail Warraich. “Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri has
been saying that the current electoral system brings the same old faces again
and again. Can he guarantee that with the reforms he has been proposing, the
same faces would not return?” he questions. The ECP is under pressure from
different political parties and it would be good that parliament takes step
to address the grievances of the political parties, he says. Raza Rumi, a political
commentator admits that the ECP has several challenges in conducting the next
elections. “It is true that Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G.
Ibrahim is a very honest and committed person but most of the staff of ECP is
politically appointed. They do not have the capacity to hold free and fair
elections,” he says. Political violence is on
the rise in the country while ECP does not have a mechanism of law
enforcement. “It totally depends on law enforcement agencies which are
already under siege of terrorists.” He says the problem with implementation
of code of conduct is that its enforcement at local level is not possible
without political parties and local administration. “The ECP must be made
independent to save the political process from manipulation.” According to the ECP data
in 2008 elections, it set up 64,176 polling stations with more than 550,000
government employees deployed to conduct these elections. “It is true that
it is not an easy task to make sure that all those deployed to conduct
elections are trained and honest people but the ECP has its mechanism to
check irregularities. Then we have judicial presiding officers who oversee
the whole process of elections to make it free and fair,” says an official
of ECP. Sarwar Bari, head of Pattan
Development Organisation, an Islamabad based NGO working on political
participation and election monitoring, says that Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri is only
trying to score points as far as reforming electoral system is concerned.
“He has not come up with specific suggestions. We also need to understand
that top down reforms hardly succeed. We have already seen Bhutto’s land
reform ended in failure. So, first we need to make sure that society as a
whole demand these reforms,” he says adding that new code of conduct has
been grossly violated by elections. “In Pakistan, on average,
only 45 votes can be casted on a polling booth in an hour but we have found
that at some polling booths even 90 votes were cast in an hour which is
impossible. ECP needs to assert itself. It also needs to deploy internal
monitor on election day which would make sure implementation of new code of
conduct,” says Bari.
Sceptic’s
Diary Peace is a word
that sounds good. Depending on the context, it can also become trendy and
many can claim to be ‘for’ it. But its apparent appeal is deceiving —
in that it demands a lot more than what we may initially believe. It requires
checking knee-jerk reactions and putting cultivated stereotypes on the
back-burner. It may also seem counter-intuitive to many and it needs
committed hands and heads to nurture it — like a seasoned gardener tends to
the most defiant plants in challenging weather. The relationship between
India and Pakistan shares the traits of a dramatic Bollywood story involving
separated twins — shared memories, different readings/interpretations of
their history and feeling hard done by the other. The dangerous bit is that
nothing is fiction as far as the real consequences are concerned. Real lives
are affected and lost in the entire process. In the past few months we
have seen a period of peace with both governments taking measured steps to
help build confidence and a sustainable peace. The media on both sides,
apparently, was on board—till of course the boat was rocked. The recent
dispute over regrettable occurrences involving deaths of soldiers on both the
Indian and Pakistan side puts this in stark focus. Neither the India nor the
Pakistan media has access to the complete let alone precise factual details
of what happened. Yet the electronic media on both sides has wasted no time
in spewing hate for ‘the other’. So much for ‘Aman Ki Asha’ and all
that jazz. The electronic media in
both countries has to make a choice. Either it needs to stop pretending that
it is ‘for’ peace or it needs to re-define its role in times when
tensions between the two neighbors run high. Pressure from citizens that we
can call the bluff and duplicitous role of the media will help. Of course the
electronic media has to care about public sentiment and ratings—it is a
business after all. But if it is genuinely aiming to help build peace between
two neighbors such as India and Pakistan it needs to make exceptions to its
policy of sensationalizing and provocative stories. Both Indian and Pakistani
electronic media appear equally guilty of adding fuel to the fire regarding
the recent LOC related tensions rather than defusing them. Both ran
provocative stories and yet, laughably, at the same time asked civil and
military high command regarding the “details” of what happened. How can
you run a story making provocative claims if you don’t even know the
details? Well, you can I suppose, as long as you know you will get away with
it and make money off it. Whenever the ship of peace
is rocked, media houses in both countries seem to be in a race to decide who
can invite the most provocative “expert”. There is no shortage of them on
either side. Then there are those who end up doing damage they don’t even
realize. Consider the statement of a former Indian Army Chief on an Indian
news channel after allegations of Pakistan mutilating the body of an Indian
soldier. The gentleman informed the Indian public that Pakistan was acting to
“strike fear into the heart of the enemy”—something the former Indian
Army Chief insisted is ordered by the Quran and hence Pakistan was following
that policy! Now, I am sure both the retired general and the Indian media
should know that apart from sounding ridiculous as an explanation this also
makes this out to be a religion-centric dispute. This, of course, renders
vulnerable the Muslims in India to the actions of extremists on the Indian
side who might have a penchant for buying simplistic explanations. On our side, there is no
shortage of those who aid the case of the former Indian Army Chief by being
equally ridiculous and provocative. Instead of focusing on the comparatively
sane voices that can stress the importance of not jumping to conclusions in
the absence of clear information, the electronic media on both sides (all of
a sudden) develops this thirst for an answer while chanting, “Who do we
kill? Who do we hang?” Peace requires much more
than a cricket series. It is more than a song where people hug each other for
a photo-op. It is hardly served by a
refusal to address the tough questions and talk about neighbourly love in
abstract ways. Building peace often demands that we liberate ourselves from
our conditioning and that we resist what till now has been an instinctive
reaction. In many ways, it requires re-discovering ourselves and resisting
the urge to be, well, ‘ourselves’. Loss of life, whether on
the Indian or Pakistani side, is regrettable and should be investigated. If
there has been any departure from the ceasefire in place or a contravention
of applicable legal standards then those issues must be addressed in a
transparent way for all to see. However, in the meanwhile the electronic
media on both sides would do well to stop insulting its own intelligence. By
being a little sane and by inviting people who can actually offer the
counter-intuitive perspective urging calm in tense situations, the media may
do a lot more for peace than it does by spending millions over an ad
campaign. Peace isn’t about a
catchy video and newspaper ads. It is about changing attitudes and that often
doesn’t require or result in things that make sensational headlines. |
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