Indian Press on Muslim Daughters, Modi’s AMU Pitch To Muslim And Trump’s Martial Law Option: New Age Islam's Selection, 26 December 2020
By
New Age Islam Edit Desk
26 December
2020
•
Education and Empowerment of Muslim Daughters: Back PM Outreach with Sincere
Action
The
Times of India Editorial
• In
Modi’s AMU Pitch To Muslims, Retreat From Party Politics Hurting Foreign Policy
Interests
By
Shekhar Gupta
• PM
Modi, Thanks For Recognising AMU As Mini India And Not Pakistan
By
Nishtha Gautam
• As
India Bolsters Its Anti-Muslim Credo, Where Is Hindu Society's Outrage?
By
Apoorvanand
•
Trump’s Martial Law Option
The
Statesman Editorial
•
Growing A Movement
By
Nadeem Paracha
•
Despite Trump’s Exit, Belief in a Benevolent US as Leader Of the ‘Free World’
Lies In Tatters
By
Vinay Lal
----
Education
And Empowerment Of Muslim Daughters: Back PM Outreach With Sincere Action
The
Times of India Editorial
December
25, 2020
Speaking at
the centenary celebration of Aligarh Muslim University, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi laid a special stress on the “education and empowerment of Muslim
daughters”. The dropout rate of Muslim girls had decreased from 70% to roughly
30%, he said. He pointed out that schemes like building more toilets and
starting new gas connections help all households, and also mentioned the triple
talaq law the government had brought in.
Any effort
to soften the mutual hostility and suspicion between the government and the
Muslim community is worthwhile at this point. But if the PM sincerely cares
about Muslim women, a lot remains to be done. Muslim women are triply
disadvantaged in India – on account of being female, from a minority community,
and overwhelmingly poor. While the discourse often focusses on religious
conservatism or personal law, attributing great disempowerment to cultural
markers like the hijab, the fact is that Muslim girls need the same things
other girls do – to study, work, and explore the world.
The
increased presence of Muslim girls in school is the consequence of concerted
policy. The Right to Education Act, minority scholarships, schemes like
bicycles for girls and free sanitary pads did a lot to increase retention.
Today, when these gains are being lost in the pandemic, the government would do
well to widen opportunity with targeted policy. Their wellbeing is also linked
with that of their families and communities. If the government cares about
Muslim women, it must show that it cares more about Muslims.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/beyond-stereotypes-back-pm-outreach-with-sincere-action/
----
In
Modi’s AMU Pitch to Muslims, Retreat from Party Politics Hurting Foreign Policy
Interests
By
Shekhar Gupta
26
December, 2020
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi chose the last full week in 2020 to launch some
important outreach to two sets of angry constituents: Muslims and the farmers.
It is his
first outreach, to India’s alienated Muslim minority, that we are more
interested in. First, because, as in 2019, he concluded the year with a pitch
to India’s Muslims. Second, because, somewhat serendipitously, he chose 22
December to do so. Remember, last year, he had similarly spoken at Delhi’s
Ramlila Maidan when the anti-CAA agitation was at its peak. Third, because his
tone and political proposition to Muslims again seemed contrary to his party’s
politics and actions. And fourth, because it followed a very significant
statement by his home minister, and deputy any which way, Amit Shah, who stated
clearly during his West Bengal visit that the process of implementing the
Citizenship Amendment Act has been put off for the time being.
The
deadline for framing rules under the new law is long over and now the
government will have to go back to a Parliamentary committee for a third
extension. How could we implement the law when the pandemic is raging, Shah
said, adding that it’s better to wait until the vaccination process starts.
We will
risk inferring from this that the government has realised the downside — for
international relations, and even internal security — of pushing too hard with
this strategy. Because, whatever the arguments on either side, it is seen
internationally, and by a critical mass of people at home, as a policy of
Muslim exclusion.
The prime
minister’s choice of Aligarh Muslim University’s annual day for making this
outreach was significant. Earlier this year, the same university was caught in
a maelstrom of protests, police high-handedness and calumny. Now, Modi has
described it as “mini India” and asked its students and faculty to present a
good and fair picture of the country to the world.
The
reference was obviously to the many foreign students who routinely come to
study at AMU. At this point, the number, ThePrint reporter Fatima Khan tells
me, is about 615 in a total of 22,000, besides the NRIs. The larger contingents
come from Afghanistan (42), Bangladesh (68), Indonesia (66), Jordan (49), Nepal
(20), Palestine (13), Iran (15), Thailand (117), Turkmenistan (21), Yemen
(151), and Iraq (29).
There are
smaller contingents even from the US, Mauritius, New Zealand and Nigeria. Each
is a friendly country and of vital national strategic interest.
Just for
the record, AMU also has a Pakistani woman student, in the dentistry college.
The impressions these students take back of India are mostly formed on the AMU
campus.
For the
past year, that impression has been overwhelmingly negative. And young, aware
Indian Muslims, who constitute a majority of its students and faculty, have had
reasons to feel angry and alienated.
Yet, why
should Modi bother? Muslims do not vote for him. If anything, the coming
elections in West Bengal and Assam will bring back the need for polarisation,
the tip of the BJP’s electoral spear.
The BJP
under him and Amit Shah has done an incredible electoral job of collecting
votes in a narrower catchment, excluding the minorities. They’ve made the
Muslim vote irrelevant in the big picture. Why should they then bother to reach
out to them now? Angry, frustrated, alienated and isolated Muslims may indeed
cheer their base.
We have to
go back exactly by a year, to 22 December 2019, and Modi’s speech at the
Ramlila Maidan, for a clue. In that speech, he took appreciative note of the
fact that Muslim protesters were using the Tricolour and the Constitution, and
then qualified it by suggesting that they should, at the same time, be speaking
against terrorism. That is the usual BJP/RSS Tebbit test for India’s
minorities. For those of younger generations or not interested in cricket, this
refers to British Conservative politician Norman Tebbit, who, infamously, put
British citizens from the cricket-playing former colonies to the test of
whether they supported England or their native countries’ teams in a Test
match.
But Modi
got off that kerb quickly, kept his tone friendly and benign, asserted that
none of his welfare policies discriminated against minorities. Which, to be
fair, is correct. Then, he topped that cake with icing of his choice: By
listing all the prestigious national honours and awards he had been honoured
with by important Muslim countries. That is what we see as a possible clue to
his thinking.
Everybody
likes awards, honours and adulation. Yet, whatever these mean to Modi
personally, more important is that this was part of his very significant
reaching out to Muslim, especially Arab, countries. This was a deft outflanking
of Pakistan to its West. What he tried to the East, with Xi Jinping, failed.
Now, if the
move with China failed — and at this point we have troops eyeball-to-eyeball
and Pakistan has more or less ‘progressed’ to becoming a Chinese client state
or protectorate — it is because Xi Jinping saw more value in that. The ploy
with the Arab world, meanwhile, has worked so far. Saudi Arabia and the UAE,
Pakistan’s closest friends, patrons and moneybags, have drifted far away. So
far, that Saudis are demanding their loans back, China plays the white knight
to rescue Pakistan, and the UAE has stopped issuing visas to Pakistani workers.
This is not
a gain Modi wants to squander, particularly with a rapidly changing global
environment. There has probably been a sizeable pushback from the friendly
sections of the Islamic world on this.
How do they
continue backing India against Pakistan, if the BJP’s politics moves on the
pivot of polarisation? This, while they also deal with many fissures and
challenges within the Ummah, with both Iran and Turkey jostling for influence,
and US ‘persuasion’ at the same time to normalise relations with Israel. At a
time when even Malaysia and Pakistan seem to be warming up to Israel, the last
thing India needs is to put its Arab friends in a spot.
The world
has also changed because Trump is going and Biden will be in the White House in
three weeks. He’s committed to re-engaging with Iran, and that will open other
possibilities in the Islamic world, east of the Persian Gulf as well. Although
not nasty like Erdogan or Mahathir, Iran’s Khamenei has also lately been
critical of India’s treatment of its Muslims. And Iran is a friendly country
with many shared economic and strategic interests.
Closer
home, it is Bangladesh. In the run-up to the AMU speech was the summit between
Modi and Sheikh Hasina Wajed. The effort to repair India’s most important
strategic relationship in the neighbourhood after damage done by the CAA-NRC
rhetoric — the talk of throwing the “termites” into the Bay of Bengal — was
evident. Now, India was offering everything, from onions to vaccines. Both the
Chinese and the Pakistanis are exploring the space created by the
anti-Bangladeshi (Muslim) rhetoric in India.
More than a
change of heart, we are probably seeing a shift in tactics, for a time when the
global picture is changing, and India’s own cache value has diminished with its
economic growth. The downside of letting internal political actions play havoc
with larger strategic interest and foreign relations is stark. This is just
when India’s vulnerabilities have risen as a frontline state against China, and
the need for allies is greater than in five decades.
https://theprint.in/national-interest/in-modis-amu-pitch-to-muslims-retreat-from-party-politics-hurting-foreign-policy-interests/574105/
-----
PM Modi,
Thanks for Recognising AMU as Mini India and Not Pakistan
By
Nishtha Gautam
22 Dec 2020
As a proud
‘Alig,’ I was delighted to hear you, Mr Prime Minister, addressing us as
‘partners’ today. A welcome change from ‘anti-nationals’, ‘jihadis’, ‘Jinnah Ki
Aulaad’, and more such epithets that have now become synonymous with AMU
students, current or graduated.
Mr Prime
Minister, it was, indeed, reassuring to hear your assertion that AMU is not a
cluster of buildings but an integral part of India’s history. What we know
about history is that it doesn’t judge its good, bad, and ugly aspects and remains
agnostic. People do. And ill-informed people are adept at twisting history to
suit agendas. AMU has seen and suffered it all.
You start
your speech commending AMU’s role during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a
little later you say how the university has been elemental in strengthening
India’s foreign policy because of its Islamic research projects. I can’t help
but think of the foreign members of Tablighi Jamaat who were wrongfully
detained for intentionally spreading the virus. Can we ever forget how
Muslims—citizens and foreigners alike—were demonised for even demanding food?
Everyone jumped this bandwagon of diatribe but stayed silent when the Supreme
Court acquitted 36 foreigner Tablighis.
This also
caused us diplomatic embarrassment that you, an astute diplomat, are already
aware of. You are proud of the 1000 foreign students at AMU and want them to
carry all that is roseate about India and its people back to their motherlands.
I’m a little concerned about the baton charge and indiscriminate police action
against protesting students during the CAA protest this time last year. It is
difficult for ‘soft power’ to obliterate hard state actions from the hearts and
minds of witnesses.
I’m glad
that you underscore the importance of teaching Urdu and Arabic alongside Hindi
and Sanskrit. Hopefully, this will translate into ending vilification of
madarasas scattered across India, which are, often, the only accessible
education institutions for students in the dark pockets of our country.
You want
the pluralism that AMU stands for to never get weakened. Hope is a beautiful
thing and I choose to cling to it. It, however, gets pale when I see an
irresponsible hounding of minorities merely on grounds of difference—in attire,
food, forms of worship or even appearance.
Mr Prime
Minister, you reiterate your mantra of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka
Vishwas’ to decry any discrimination in either the intent or the policy of
Indian government. You rightly list how your government has facilitated new
bank accounts for more than 40 crore citizens, house allotments to more than
two crore citizens, gas connections to eight crore women, free foodgrain to 80
crore people during the pandemic and so on sans discrimination. Why, then, are
so many Indians still insecure about their lives (CAA protests) and livelihoods
(farmer protests)?
Mr Modi, as
an educated, enterprising, and empowered woman I was heartened to hear you
acknowledging the contribution of women like me in giving a direction to family
and nation. But how can a woman steer a country when she is not even free to
decide who she can fall in love with and marry? The bogey of Love-Jihad seeks
to deny women this agency.
Do women
have to continually live in fear? Of losing their husbands to jail and unborn
children to miscarriages? This gravy train of homogenising has reached Jalesar,
my hometown in UP, where six members of a Muslim family have been jailed
because an adult woman decided to elope with an adult man.
Mr Prime
Minister, you want AMU’s hostel students to spend time researching the
contribution of lesser-known freedom fighters. It is a noble thought. However,
how does a university deal with this suggestion when its students are made to
be ashamed of, even attacked for, its history? I’m sure you are aware of the fracas
over Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait in 2018.
You also
share your vision about ancient manuscripts in the AMU library that deserve to
be digitised and made accessible to the world at large. What if there is
something ‘objectionable’ in their content and hurts a group’s sentiments? Or
worse, what if one discovers something even remotely considered as ‘seditious’?
After all, countless students, academics and activists have been arrested for
possessing seditious literature.
For
example, Delhi Police chargesheet against Sharjeel Imam, an ‘Alig’, for
sedition and unlawful activities mentions possession of Forms of Collective
Violence, Riots, Pogroms and Genocide in Modern India by Paul Brass and notes
the following:
“By reading
only such literature and not researching alternative sources, the accused
became highly radicalised and religious bigoted.”
You rightly
pointed out, Mr Prime Minister that politics can wait, society can wait, but
development can’t. The weak and the marginalised cannot wait. Why, then, are we
still stuck compelled by ruthless electoral gains at the cost of what India
stands for fundamentally, constitutionally?
https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/prime-minister-narendra-modi-aligarh-muslim-university-love-jihad#read-more
-----
As India
Bolsters Its Anti-Muslim Credo, Where Is Hindu Society's Outrage?
By
Apoorvanand
As 2020
passes by, two things can be said with certainty about India.
One, the
state and nearly all its institutions have made it clear that the Muslims would
be treated as subjects and not citizens with rights equal to Hindus.
Second,
there is a growing realisation among the Muslims that the task of affirming their
rights and rejecting the subjecthood imposed on them is something they cannot
abdicate and leave for the future.
As the
state, through various legal instruments, wages a war against Muslim men, there
is, unfortunately, no outrage in the wider Hindu society.
The agency
of Muslims is being taken away from them and they are being robbed of their
autonomy as citizens in multiple ways and they are seen as perpetually
unlawful. The very existence of Muslims is now under serious threat in India
but no political party thinks that it is as serious an issue as the anti-tiller
farm laws. The most recent instance being the so called anti-conversion law of
the Uttar Pradesh .
The
travesty of the law was laid bare in the case of Pinki or Muskan and her
husband Rashid Ali.
The
miscarriage that a pregnant Pinki suffered
while in the custody of the state should be seen as a definite and
decisive change in the relationship between Muslims and the Indian state and
its institutions. It is also changing the relationship between Muslims and
Hindus. But most of us are not recognising the seriousness of the message from
this incident.
We know
that Pinki or Muskan was forcibly moved
to the Nari Niketan after the police arrested her Muslim husband and his
brother under the newly enforced Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful
Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020. She had married Rashid Ali In July this
year, six months prior to the promulgation of the said ordinance.
The union
of the couple was their choice. She converted to Islam.
The court
came to their rescue but only after the police submitted that there was no
evidence to prove the allegation of forcible conversion. The young woman was
allowed to rejoin her husband after she declared that her marriage had her
consent. Rashid and his brother spent 15 days in prison.
The media
reported that Rashid was happy that he was free, “We got married with mutual
consent. I have already spent 15 days in jail. But today I am happy as I have
been released,” said Rashid after stepping out of the prison. When asked if he
felt the police had misused the new law, he chose to keep mum.
That he
chose to ‘keep mum’ must worry us. A Muslim’s inability to even express anguish
when subjected to injustice has now become routine.
One must
not forget that at least 11 Muslims have been arrested after the ordinance was
announced. Hours after the new ordinance came into force, a most absurd arrest
was made. Ahmed, a 22-year-old man was arrested as the father of a married
woman alleged that he was threatening to kidnap his daughter and convert her.
The woman is married and is living with her husband and here is the father
alleging that Ahmed wants to convert her after abducting her! The police
promptly swings into action, forms several search teams and “nabs”Ahmed.
The latest
is the arrest of a Muslim man in Shahjahanpur. A 42-year-old married Hindu
woman, a mother of two children, accompanied by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
members went to the police alleging that the man had established a physical
relationship with her using a Hindu name and was forcing her to convert with
the intention of taking her property.
The man was
promptly arrested and different IPC sections were slapped on him. How do we see
this complaint? Are relationships – pre-marital or extra marital – between
Hindu women and Muslim men now being tracked by community spies and the
vulnerable women blackmailed to charge Muslim men with forcible conversion and
abduction?
Muslim men
are being placed in an impossible situation. How would he prove that the woman
was lying?
These
arrested Muslims are not as fortunate as Rashid and Muskan. Himachal Pradesh
has also enacted a similar law. The BJP leaders are demanding it in other
states as well.
Let us
return to Muskan.
She has
alleged that the doctors and authorities should be held responsible for the
miscarriage. First, they denied it, but now that it is confirmed there is no
response to the charge made by Muskan.
The crime
is serious. A forcible abortion should be treated like murder. Would the people
responsible be held accountable and made to face law? Again, an absurd
question. It sounds distasteful but one cannot but remember that one of the
main features of the propaganda of marriage between a Muslim man and Hindu
woman, which allegedly makes this alliance more sinister, is that the wombs of
Hindu women are used to produce Muslims. The reverse is not only allowed but
desirable. So, the destruction of a yet-to-be-born Muslim becomes a duty.
These laws
have a provision that if one of the couple returns to the ‘parent religion’ or
mool dharm, it would not be treated as a crime. One need not guess which
religion would get this exalted status of being the original or parent religion
of this country. If a Hindu man marries a Muslim woman and she converts to his
religion, it would not be a crime under these laws. Instead as we saw in case
in Uttar Pradesh, they would get protection from the law.
These laws
against marriage for the purpose of conversion are the most potent tool after
the anti-cow slaughter laws to criminalise Muslims, primarily Muslim men. The
Triple Talaq Act was a precursor in this respect.
It has been
pointed out that these laws are against the right to choice, against love,
against the agency of Hindu and Dalit women. All this is of course true.
The law
will definitely impact them but we also need to remember that it would be only
Muslim men who would face criminal charges. It is they who would be jailed.
They will have to fight a long battle, ruin themselves and their families to prove
their innocence.
The women
in question would need to be extraordinarily courageous like Muskan to save
their Muslim partners from the Indian state.
Would all Hindu women be able to resist organised groups like the
Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad? Would they not be forced to criminalise
their ‘lovers’ to save their honour or lives?
The
anti-conversion law is based on a lie. It says that marriages between Muslim
men and Hindu women are done for the purpose of conversion.
We are
aware that what happens usually is that such couples are discouraged when they
want to use the route of the Special Marriage Act.
Their names
are publicised and they become vulnerable as the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal people
keep an eye on the marriage registrar offices and track Hindu man-Muslim woman
couple applying for marriage. Moreover, such couples have also to save
themselves from their own families. The fastest route is therefore conversion.
Marriage in
an Arya Samaj Mandir or Nikah are the easiest way of getting a formal
validation of their relationship. To claim that Muslim men marry Hindu women
with the aim to convert them is perverted logic. But the courts also accept it.
The lie in
the case of the Triple Talaq Act was visible on its surface. But even
progressives went to this government pleading for this law. Muslim men leaving
their wives without due process, i.e. using instant triple talaq, would be
jailed. What about non-Muslim husbands deserting their wives without any due
process? Why do they not fear going to jail?
Muslims
have been thus placed in an unequal situation in India with all agencies and
laws arranged against them. Their rights as individuals and their rights as
members of a religious community are being curtailed consistently.
Lies and
deception are being used to do this. But most of us call them
anti-constitutional, anti-human, and anti-Indian but cannot muster courage to
say that they are anti-Muslim and the fact that the anti-Muslimness of these
moves should be sufficient to fight against them.
https://thewire.in/communalism/as-india-bolsters-its-anti-muslim-credo-where-is-the-hindu-societys-outrage
-----
Trump’s
Martial Law Option
The
Statesman Editorial
December
26, 2020
In what is
described as unprecedented craziness, Donald Trump has suggested a new and
severe attempt to impose martial law as part of a desperate initiative to
overturn Joe Biden’s victory in last November’s election.
The move,
raised in a reportedly chaotic meeting in the Oval Office, is both disingenuous
and laughable. Now going through the wrap-up motions of his presidency, he is
said to have raised the possibility of using the military to enforce a second
term as President of the United States of America.
He was
rebuffed by many of his closest advisers, but the fact that it was raised at
the Oval Office serves to underline his desperation to defy the verdict. Sidney
Powell and Michael Flynn, two of Trump’s closest public advocates, were at the
meeting.
Powell is a
lawyer who has led many of the failed court attempts to allege voter fraud. Her
conspiracy theories ~ for instance that Hugo Chavez, the former Venezuelan
President who died in 2013, was part of a plot to swindle Trump out of his
victory ~ caused the rest of the President’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani,
to cut ties with her last month.
Trump’s
advisers, including Giuliani, have opposed the idea of martial law, and
suggested instead the seizure of voting mahines to investigate possible fraud.
The idea was also “aggressively” opposed by Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of
staff, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. The Oval office meeting is
said to have become raucous and involved people shouting.
Clearly
Trump is fighting a losing battle though his legal advisers, pre-eminently
Powell and Flynn, have suggested, that Trump “could take military capabilities
and could basically rerun an election in each these states”. With less than
four weeks to go for the transition, Trump’s desperation seems to be growing.
For all that, the US government is facing the prospect of a year-end shutdown
with Trump threateninng not to sign a $2.3 trillion package that includes
government funding and coronavirus assistance.
The package
was the outcome of months of negotiations between Conngressional Democrats and
Republicans. It also funds goverment operations till September 2021. This would
mean that if Trump blocks the assistance, then large sections of the government
could shut down.
In a video
posted on social media earlier this week, the outgoing President has sought the
bill be revised to include the payment of $2000 to every American.
This is
more than triple the $600 person included in the bill. Federal funding is due
to expire on Monday if Trump does not sign the bill into law. A funding lapse
would furlough millons of federal workers and shut wide segments of the US
government at a time when it is rushing to distribute two coronavirus vaccines.
The catastrophe has killed more than 323,000 Americans, and left millions
jobless.
https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/trumps-martial-law-option-1502942850.html
-----
Growing
A Movement
By
Nadeem Paracha
26 December
2020
Nawaz
Sharif is promising a democratic and political system that will not be rigged,
engineered or tampered by non-civilian elite
On December
13, the 11-party Opposition alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM),
held a large rally in Lahore. It marked the completion of the first phase of
the alliance’s agitation against the Imran Khan Government which saw the PDM
hold anti-Government rallies in six cities in Pakistan.
The next
phase of the movement was kicked off by the PDM holding a rally in Mardan on
December 23 despite a ban imposed by the district administration amid the
COVID-19 pandemic. The protesters, led by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam(F) and PDM chief
Maulana Fazlur Rehman, senior Pakistan Peoples Party leader Yousuf Raza Gilani
and Pakistani Muslim League (Nawaz) vice-president Maryam Nawaz, gathered at
the Gaju Baba Khan flyover to address a huge crowd. The rally in Mardan would
be followed by another public meeting in Larkana on December 27 on the eve of
the death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto.
The PDM has
demanded that Prime Minister Khan’s Government quit by January 31 or face
intensified movements by Opposition parties. This includes a “long march” towards Islamabad in
late January or early February and
possible resignations of Opposition members in the Assemblies. The PDM has
decided to focus on smaller cities for public meetings and protests will be
held in Bahawalpur on December 30, Malakand on January 3, Bannu on January 6,
Khuzdar on January 9, Loralai on January 13, Tharparkar on January 16,
Faisalabad on January 18, Sargodha on January 23, and Sialkot on January 27.
Political
pundits and analysts are already outweighing the chances of both the PDM and
the Imran Khan Government. Heated debates are taking place about whether the
Opposition alliance would be able to dislodge the Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaf
(PTI) Government that is already besieged by a faltering economy, rising
inflation, a lethal pandemic and the Government’s own blunders, which are many.
In his
characteristic style Khan stepped up his efforts to silence the voice of the
PDM, along with the voices of thousands who criticised his Government. Despite
such attempts, the PDM has held its ground and organised five major rallies in
Multan, Peshawar, Gujranwala, Karachi, and Quetta since October 16. Now it is
upping the ante even further.
Most
commentators are of the view that, even if the PDM is unable to outright force
Khan’s departure, it can create a serious constitutional and political crisis,
which will not only bog down a troubled regime but can also create issues for
the military establishment that is overtly backing the present set-up in
Islamabad.
The most
worrisome aspect of this is that the military establishment has begun to be
seen as a visible party in the conflict between the PDM and the Khan
Government. The kind of political crisis the PDM’s agitation is expected to
create can be detrimental to a highly polarised polity. There have been five
major anti-Government movements since Pakistan’s inception in August 1947. The
first such movement was able to force the military dictator, Ayub Khan to
resign in 1969. Though the second one managed to stall Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s
bid to rule as the Prime Minister of Pakistan for the second time in 1977, but
it also saw the imposition of the country’s third and perhaps harshest,
military regime.
The third
major movement was made up of a cluster of movements between 1981 and 1986,
against the General Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship. Even though intense and at times
extremely violent, this movement failed to dislodge the dictator. He died in a
plane crash in 1988.
The fourth
movement rose up against the General Musharraf dictatorship in 2007 and
succeeded in ousting him through a forced resignation.
Ironically,
the last major anti-Government movement was led by Imran Khan’s PTI against the
third Nawaz Sharif regime. It was unsuccessful but it did manage to create
enough space for the PTI to squeeze through during the controversial 2018
elections.
The PDM has
succeeded in holding impressive rallies. But it is still not a full-fledged
movement. It is expecting to evolve into becoming one during its next phase.
However, it is still too early to predict whether the PDM will succeed in
removing the Imran Khan Government or, especially, if it can actually achieve
its second and more ambitious, aim to neutralise the self-appointed political
role of the military-establishment.
Succeed or
not, once the PDM does evolve into becoming a movement, there is every
likelihood that things will begin to alter, for good or otherwise. In a 1973
essay for the Annual Review of Anthropology, the American sociologist and
anthropologist Ralph W Nicholas writes that political and social movements may
have varying degrees of success (or, for that matter, failure) but they leave
behind societies that are never quite the same.
Nicholas
describes movements as “liminal” or “the interim between the end of the old and
the beginning of the new.” According to Nicholas, movements may evolve into
becoming successful uprisings, or they may be crushed but, no matter what the
outcome, they always have what it takes to become contagious. He adds that they
also have the seeds to become “successive.” By this Nicholas means that even
movements that are crushed or collapse become paradigms for future protests.
As long as
there are conditions for a movement to emerge, they will, despite being
repeatedly vanquished. According to the “political opportunity theory”, if a
political system seems vulnerable, there will emerge challengers who would move
to use this vulnerability as an opportunity to push for political or social
change. The American political scientist and historian, Charles Tilly is often
credited as being one of the foremost pioneers of the aforementioned theory.
The theory
is not as much about why movements emerge, as such, but rather what course they
take once they get going. Reasons behind the why, generally speaking, can be
economic or to do with repression. Interestingly, the theory states that
democratic pluralism too, can become a factor.
For
example, all these factors can be seen as playing a role in the large pockets
of protests emerging in India recently. An economic downturn, coupled with
political repression of liberal voices and the country’s long-standing
democratic systems, are allowing these protests to take shape, so much so that
some members of the Government are now lamenting that “too much democracy” is a
problem. This could be understood as meaning that democracy is hindering their
desire to fully implement the Government’s contentious projects.
However,
the theory is equally applicable in regions where there are economic issues and
repression but too little or no democracy. The theory states that agitation
against these or other issues brews in pockets that continue to expand even
when these pockets are repressed. Their consistency eventually begins to sap
the energy of the State and this creates opportunities for pockets of
resistance to mobilise from within and outside their circle until they merge to
become a people’s protest.
The
conditions for a movement in Pakistan are ripe. Economic meltdown, State
repression, bad governance and political polarisation are now pitching one
chunk of the polity against the other. The PDM’s agenda is thus clear — to
exhaust its opponents, so ample opportunities emerge to further expand and grow
the movement. But according to Nicholas, politics alone will not be sufficient.
Disillusionment against an existing governing ideology needs to be replaced by
a new promise to invigorate a disillusioned polity.
The
anti-Ayub Khan movement offered various forms of economic equality to inspire
the people to come out and protest. An “Islamic” system of Government was
promised by the movement to bring people out against the ZA Bhutto regime. The
idea of “tabdeeli (change)” was floated by Imran Khan during his party’s street
protests. And now Sharif is promising a democratic and political system that
will not be rigged, engineered or tampered by non-civilian elite.
Promising
democracy alone would not have been able to draw the kind of attention that the
PDM has managed to attract. This promise needed a new angle which Sharif has
ingeniously provided.
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/columnists/growing-a-movement.html
-----
Despite
Trump’s Exit, Belief in a Benevolent US as Leader Of the ‘Free World’ Lies in
Tatters
By
Vinay Lal
December
24, 2020
It scarcely
seems possible that it was a mere 30 years ago, as the Berlin Wall came
crashing down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and what Winston Churchill had famously
called the “Iron Curtain” was lifted from eastern Europe, that commentators in
the West were jubilantly pronouncing (to use Francis Fukuyama’s phrase) “the
end of history”. The supposition was that the entire world seemed on course to
accept the idea that the liberal democracies of the West and, more
particularly, the United States, represented the pinnacle of human achievement
and that the aspirations of people everywhere could only be met through the
free market. It mattered not a jot that, precisely at this time, the US was
cajoling nations into joining an international coalition designed to bring
Saddam Hussein to heel and bomb Iraq “back into the stone age”. Those who saw
ominous signs of what unchecked American power might mean worldwide, and in the
US itself, for democracy and social justice were dismissed as pathetic remnants
of a warped communist vision that could not recognise the dawn of a new age of
freedom.
The First
Gulf War was followed by another a decade later, and still a decade later the
Arab Spring came and went. The promise of revolution was everywhere but it was
thwarted by dictators, warlords and religious fanatics, who did everything they
could to sow terror and exact the submission of ordinary people. But it was not
only the Middle East that was imploding, aided by inept American foreign policy
and the presumption that what is good for America is good for the world. The
last decade has seen a large number of countries—Hungary, Poland, Turkey,
Brazil, India, the US, among others—take the turn towards authoritarianism.
Russia has been inventive in transforming Stalinism into oligarchic despotism
and China seems determined to let its heavy hand fall where it will. At no
other time since the end of World War II has so much of the world seemed so
susceptible to political authoritarianism. That may be one reason why many
people are rejoicing that the US, after the nightmarish years of the Trump
presidency, seems set after Joe Biden’s triumph to rejoin “the international
community” and assume leadership of the “free world”.
However,
what 2020 has indubitably established is that the US is altered forever and
cannot simply pick up from where, as decent people fondly imagine, it veered
off course in a fit of absentmindedness, forgetful of its supposed mission as
the world’s greatest democracy to serve as a beacon of light to the world. The
dominant narrative that the US has been successful in circulating has American
democracy being carved out of the enlightened thinking of “the founding fathers”,
but the genocidal impulse is just as inextricably built into the history of the
American nation.
The origins
of the United States lie in the demographic holocaust perpetrated by the white
man against Native Americans, whose annihilation was as much willed as it was
precipitated by the “Old World” diseases from which the indigenous people had
no immunity.
It is
epidemic disease which, ironically, is leading to the unraveling of the United
States. Most of the world is reeling from the coronavirus pandemic but the US
is hurtling into the abyss of death. On one single day, December 16, over 3,600
Americans died and 17.5 million Americans have already been identified as COVID
positive. It is baffling that the world’s richest and most powerful country accounts
for almost a fifth of the global mortality of 1.675 million.
Healthcare
expenditures per capita are significantly higher in the US than any other
country, and it boasts of having half of the world’s Nobel Laureates in
medicine and the sciences, and the most advanced laboratories for medical
research. And, yet, for nearly 10 months, barring a short respite over the
summer months, the country has been awash with news of shortages of essential
medical supplies, personal protective equipment, ventilators and ICU beds. The
dead have overwhelmingly come from the ranks of the very old, ethnic
minorities—a heavily disproportionate number of African Americans, Hispanics,
and Native Americans—and prisoners. These are people who, as has happened so
often in the American past, have been envisioned as disposable. Is it too much
of a stretch to think that what is on witness in the US today is a permissive
genocide?
Humiliation
is a trifling inadequate to convey the extent of the spectacle that the US has
become to people around the world to whom it is part of their national
imaginary. They would like to put the misfortunes of the US down to the
ineptness, even callousness, of Trump; among the more informed, there is also a
greater awareness of how the federal structure of American governance, the
strong traditions of states’ rights, and the deep suspicion with which many
Americans view the state have contributed to the highly decentralised and
chaotic American response to the pandemic. But the problems run much deeper: public
political discourse in the US sometimes conveys the impression of being
conducted by Rip Van Winkles who went to sleep and awoke 20 years later to find
a world beyond their comprehension. While the pandemic has been raging on,
Americans have been stockpiling on their guns. If only one could shoot the
virus dead!
It is not,
however, the coronavirus that fundamentally ails the country. The more
sensitive Americans are aghast at how dysfunctional the political system has
become and the deep divisions that characterise the political landscape. It is
common to hear of the erosion of trust, the lack of “bipartisanship”, the
frequent deadlocks in Congress, and the onslaught on civil servants. In truth,
however much some would like to pin it all on Trump, the social and political
ills that were always lurking in the shadows have become more visible and
pronounced. It is no longer possible to speak of the Republican party as a
legitimate political party. Its leaders are little better than hoodlums and
mafia dons; they emit a stench not only of white supremacism but of
self-aggrandizement, unchecked greed, and, most disturbingly, a total disregard
for truth and utter lack of compassion for the poor, the weak, and the
marginalised. Similarly, the “divide” between “red” and “blue” states, liberals
and conservatives, and the hinterland and the coasts considerably understates
the extent to which the US is unravelling. To be sure, the US will not crumble
like a cookie: empires do not die overnight, and there is much resilience and
goodness in the American character. Nevertheless, those who live and flourish
by brutalising others are themselves brutalised. There can be little doubt
that, to use the historians’ phrase, 2020 will be a “turning point” in American
and thus global history.
----
Lal is
the author of The Fury of COVID-19: The Politics, Histories, and Unrequited
Love of the Coronavirus
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-us-relations-forrign-policy-us-elections-modi-govt-7117351/
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