I got this column today in the mail but do not have a url. But seriously, there is a limit to the number of times you can blame the past for the current situation.
Reminds me of the joke. An outgoing CEO hands 3 envelopes to the incoming CEO and says, open in order when you have problems. First year, the loss is big, so he opens first envelope which says, "blame previous CEO". Second year, same problem, second envelope says "blame the market" and the third year, when the same problem occurs, the third envelope says "prepare 3 envelopes".
It is a joke, and you cant really have another political system as easily, but too many times I have seen this blaming the past, others, religion, feudals, India, USA, zionists, everybody and his dog coming out of Pakistan. Sorry but it doesnt stick any more. This moaning and "blame somebody else" excuse has been used for 60 years and its wearing very thin, I am afraid. You want a proper democratic system, then you need to work on it. What do you think the Indians or Americans do? wave a magic wand? or do you think they didnt have the same or equivalent problems?
> Trauma of being a Pakistani
> By M.B. Naqvi
> 10 October 2007
>
> Pakistanis are actually in a state of trauma over their own failures
> to run a decent democracy. They tend to compare themselves with
> Indians and think that they are in no way different or inferior to
> them; if they can run a democracy why can't they?
>
> Their failure is a legacy of pre-partition Indian politics,
> particularly of the state of Muslim communalism's political awareness
> and their inability to adjust to the Twentieth Century. The Muslim
> League leadership was essentially in the hands of landlords of
> northern India from UP to Bengal. Their interests were limited to
> preserving the memories of past glories and advantages that went with
> them. Preservations of their lands was understandable, though not
> justifiable, at a time when calls for abolition of landlordism had
> begun to be raised by some Congressmen.
>
> They were pre-moderns, ensconced in the values of landowning classes
> ancestors. They actually had imposed social and international
> isolation on themselves by not intermixing more frequently and freely
> with relatively more modern educated Hindus.
>
> Pakistan inherited the imperatives of Muslim communalism of
> pre-independence India that degenerated into simple notions of doing
> everything that the Indians do not do and opposing them wherever
> possible was the right attitude. It was the Kashmir dispute in 1947
> that put Pakistan on an anti-Indian orientation virtually permanently.
> The policies that resulted from this orientation were to build up an
> army, confront India and if possible wrest Kashmir or force India to
> hold a plebiscite which, they thought, would necessarily result in
> Kashmiris automatically falling like a ripe fruit in their lap. That
> this was unrealistic has not been realized fully by all sections of
> Pakistanis even today, though many do, including importantly the
> leaders of Pakistan Army itself. Gone are the days when they thought
> they can take Kashmir by force and the message to India that General
> Musharraf has given was that Pakistan was now ready to normalize
> relations with India and act like a friendly state, accepting the
> international boundaries as India claims to be today inside the old
> Jammu and Kashmir State.
>
> But Indians, for their own reasons, have not jumped with joy on that.
> They have their own good or bad reasons for not responding quickly,
> although this occasion should have called for a different attitude:
> After all, Pakistan has withdrawn an irredentist claim on territory
> that India claims to be its integral part. However that is where
> things stand today.
>
> But the subject we are on is the trauma that Pakistanis have suffered
> as a result of their political experiences. They have not been able to
> develop the economy the way, for instance, India has; and comparisons
> with India come naturally to them. Second, Pakistan was unable to run
> an ordered democratic life. Chief reason is that discussion on its own
> raison d'etre has not ended. There are still people who doubt whether
> Pakistan would last for ever because it is after all a man-made state,
> and not very well thought out, too.
>
> It is also afflicted with basic ideological differences. The country
> experienced its saddest day in 1971 when the entire Eastern Command of
> Pakistan Army had to surrender before the Indians and their eastern
> province became Bangladesh. Moreover, they have really been worsted in
> all the wars, including the latest actual one in the Kargil heights
> and the virtual one in 2002.
>
> One includes this last non-war as a conceptually decisive war in which
> Pakistan had to threaten the use of its nuclear weapons over a dozen
> times. That it did not take place was because Pakistan gave the
> demanded assurances to India, probably through international
> guarantors (though there is no proof of that). That satisfied India.
> Indian interest was confined to Kashmir and it got what it wanted.
> Pakistan did deliver on its new promise – after a fashion. The Indians
> were not satisfied 100 per cent but knew that Pakistan was trying to
> implement what it has promised. That Pakistan could not have
> completely implemented the promises was due to many internal factors,
> including probably some dissension within the security establishment.
>
> No one should forget the innate desire of ordinary Pakistanis for a
> peaceful and productive life in a satisfyingly democratic
> dispensation. Their record of popular agitations against military
> control is a proof of that. The latest was this year's against
> Musharraf, the fourth military dictator who is still ruling the
> country and is likely to go on ruling Pakistan until 2012 if no
> extraneous factor intervenes.
>
> While political parties are hopelessly divided and have shown to be
> incapable of mobilising the people to achieve the much-repeated goal
> of restoration of democracy. Partly these differences result from the
> various concepts of what Pakistan was to be. Then Pakistan has never
> been able to overcome a contradiction: it believes in heavy
> centralization of governance and decision-making in seeming consonance
> with the notions of Islamic brotherhood. That called forth its
> nemesis: Ethnic nationalisms in ethnically distinct provinces of NWFP,
> Balochistan and Sindh.
>
> These provinces have developed nationalisms: Pushtoon nationalism used
> to be a secular and democratic concept. It now comes in two versions:
> heavily tinged with Islam (Taliban) and the old secular entity first
> set up by the famed Frontier Gandhi. There is hardly any nationalism
> that is quite secular. Third there is Sindhi nationalism that is based
> on Sindh, Sindhi language and its historical memories, again wholly
> secular. But the central challenge has, somehow, come to be an Islamic
> State, evolved painfully as a continuation and reorientation of Indian
> Muslim communalism, though it comes in various hues and colours.
> Fuller treatment of this genre is not possible here.
>
> Islam sits heavily on Pakistanis. One Islamic scholar, Maulana Abul
> Ala Maudoodi, founder of Jamaate Islami, has produced a uniquely
> integrated concept of Islamic State that would have its own Islamic
> economy and Islamic culture (whatever that means). The purpose of
> heart of Islamic idea, accumulated and evolved in eight or nine
> centuries in India, lay in individual piety but no concept of any
> uniquely Islamic state. But that is now all the rage – and not only in
> Pakistan.
>
> The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt spread this notion all over Middle
> East and Meghreb and it believes in the same kind of Islamic system
> with occasional differences. The latest arrival in this genre is the
> influence of Saudi beliefs of Wahabi and Salafiisms. These are, in
> today's terms, intensely anti-American because Americans are perceived
> to be fighting Islam and Muslims everywhere. All these schools have
> their counterparts in Pakistan.
>
> A regular insurgency is going on in NWFP and it is no longer confined
> to its tribal areas alone; it is now spreading into throughout the
> settled parts of the province. Pakistan Army is fighting it but is not
> winning. Indeed it might be in for another defeat. Most of the
> religious leaders and the Pakistan government are convinced that is
> better to do a deal with Islamists that gives them giving them as much
> internal autonomy to establish whatever Islamic State they can than to
> go on fighting an unwinnable war.
>
> This is a huge and growing challenge for Pakistan. It has still to
> find a way of countering secular nationalisms in Balochistan and
> Sindh. The centre remains committed to a vague but raucous rhetoric of
> Islam without any content. This makes for utter confusion and
> divisions within the public life. The outlook is not bright.
>
> The military has, however, grown as a corporate entity that has become
> a strong vested interest demanding ever greater share of the national
> resources. That is resented by ethnic nationalists and real democrats
> everywhere. The military however has been clever. It has collected a
> coalition of interests that are socially important today, the main
> constituents of the regime are: Big landowners, big business, some
> medium sized industrialists, bankers and successful professionals like
> Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada. This is a strong coalition of controlling
> social elites. On present showing, there is no alternative coalition
> of interests that can replace it. The next government too will be a
> reflection of what the governments have been under the military
> leadership before. We are looking into a future where Pakistan Army
> would continue to rule indefinitely until there is a big explosion,
> caused by no matter what.
>
> MB Naqvi is a well-known columnist of Pakistan. He writes regular
> columns in many Pakistani newspapers and magazines
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
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