From Jinnah to Hafiz Saeed and …


(G. PARTHASARATHY, The Hindu Business Line, Thursday, Sep 03, 2009) — Jinnah shared a common interest with the British in ensuring that there was a weak central government in India incapable of holding the country together. His aims were thus not very different from those of the Jamat-ud-Dawa’s Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, who keeps harping on the ‘disintegration’ of India, says G. PARTHASARATHY. –

Addressing a gathering of tens of thousands of zealots at the headquarters of the Jamat-ud-Dawa (earlier called the Lashkar-e-Taiba), on November 3, 2000, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed had thundered: “Jihad is not about Kashmir only. About 15 years ago people might have found it ridiculous if someone had told them about the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Today, I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest till the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan”.

Saeed has been regularly publicly pronouncing a war that would encompass the whole of India. Till the terrorist outrage of 26/11 no one took him seriously. Shortly after his November 2000 speech, Saeed sent his “Mujahideen” into the very heart of New Delhi, to attack the historic Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Addressing a gathering of political leaders from Islamic parties shortly thereafter, Saeed proudly proclaimed that he had unfurled the green flag of Islam in the historic Red Fort.

Hafiz Mohammed Saeed was and is no ordinary person. He enjoyed the patronage of former Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who had sent the Governor of Punjab, Shahid Hamid, and his Information Minister, Mushahid Hussein Syed, to personally call on and pay their respects to Saeed in 1998. The Wahabi/Salafi school of Islam propagated by Saeed was, after all, patronised by Nawaz Sharif’s father Mian Mohamed Sharif, through the Tablighi Jamat.

Moreover, at grassroots levels, the Lashkar is closely linked to the Pakistan army and the ISI, which provides weapons, training and logistics support to the extremist group. But is Saeed’s talk of “disintegration’ of India merely the rhetoric of an isolated individual, or does it reflect a wider strategic vision within Pakistan, particularly its armed forces?
Fomenting separatism

While the “idea” of Pakistan was first enunciated by Chaudhuri Rehmat Ali in 1933 and given shape in the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League in 1940, the hope and belief in Pakistan, even after it was born, was that India would be a loose confederation, with units like the Nizam’s domain in Hyderabad and even a “Dravidistan” going their own separate ways. Jinnah often spoke contemptuously of upper caste Hindus, while fostering separatism by highlighting a separate linguistic and ethnic Dravidian identity, as characterising the ethos of people in South India.

While Mahatma Gandhi tried to address centuries of exploitation and alienation of Dalits in India, together with leaders like Dr B. R. Ambedkar, Jinnah endeavoured to foment Dalit alienation. He went to the extent of encouraging elements in princely States such as Jodhpur and Travancore-Cochin to declare independence. The aim, very clearly, was to balkanise India and ensure domination of the sub-continent by a Muslim majority State.

Jinnah shared a common interest with the British in ensuring that there was a weak central government in India incapable of holding the country firmly together. His aims regarding India were thus not very different from those of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, though he was a virtually agnostic Ismaili (whom the likes of Saeed would today categorize as a ‘kaffir’) and who, according to his biographer Stanley Wolpert, liked Scotch Whisky and ham sandwiches.

Saeed, however, espouses rabid Wahabi causes. He makes no secret of his contempt for parliamentary democracy based on the principle of “one man, one vote”. But is Jinnah’s demand for a disproportionate share of parliamentary seats for his community, on the basis of their having been the “rulers” of India before the British arrived, also not a negation of the concept of ‘one man, one vote” that is the fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy? It was Jinnah’s quest for “parity’ for a minority that forms the basis of Pakistan’s unrealistic quest for parity with India — a quest that has led Pakistan to disaster.
Unity of Indian people

Jinnah’s successors, from Liaqat Ali Khan to Gen Pervez Musharraf, have conducted relations with India in the belief that India’s unity is fragile. “Field Marshal” Ayub Khan launched the 1965 conflict believing that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was a weak leader facing serious separatist problems, because of the Punjabi Suba movement in Punjab and anti-Hindi riots combined with the rise of Dravidian parties in the South, apart from continuing insurgencies in the North-East.

The Pakistani establishment was taken aback by the unity the people of India displayed in the wake of unprovoked aggression by their neighbour. Gen Zia ul Haq set up an elaborate network to encourage separatism within India and laid special stress on creating a Hindu-Sikh communal divide in Punjab. This effort failed primarily because Hindus and Sikhs alike saw through Pakistan’s game plans.

The ISI effort to “bleed” India in Jammu and Kashmir is but a continuation of the strategy to “weaken India from within” that Pakistan has followed since its birth.

One, therefore, finds it shocking when Indians who should know better, seek to extol Jinnah’s professed qualities of head and heart. Merely because he was once “secular”, does not condone his culpability in the communal holocaust he unleashed by his call for ‘direct action’.
British interests

In his meticulously researched book The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of Partition former diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila has revealed that well before the Cabinet Mission arrived in India in May 1946, two successive British Viceroys, Lord Linlithgow and Lord Wavell, had decided to partition India by creating a Muslim majority state in its north-west, bordering Iran, Afghanistan and the Sinkiang Province of China, in order to protect British interests in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah was co-opted to further this British objective even in 1939. After he achieved his ambitions, Jinnah’s efforts to impose Urdu as the sole national language of Pakistan sowed the seeds of Bangladeshi separatism and of Pakistan’s disintegration in 1971.

His assumption of office as an unelected executive head of state who presided over the Cabinet, led to his successors arbitrarily dismissing Prime Ministers and to the takeover of Pakistan by a military dominated feudal elite — a malady the country suffers from even today. It is this ruling elite that adopted policies that has led to Pakistan today being described as the “epicentre” of global terrorism. This, in the ultimate analysis, is Jinnah’s legacy to the world and to the sub-continent, in which we all live.

The statesmanlike visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the “Minar e Pakistan” in Lahore signalled that India has no intention of reversing the Partition of 1947 and that we wish the people of Pakistan well. Challenges that Pakistan’s establishment poses will be overcome when the values of secularism, pluralism and inclusive democratic development are established as being more enduring than the fantasies of nationhood based exclusively on religion, which Jinnah propounded, or the hate and bigotry of fanatics like Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)

The Hindu Business Line

       

Sri Lanka: War won, not peace

       
(New Delhi, Sept 4 2009, PTI) India’s policy on Sri Lanka in the late 1980s was held hostage to the rivalry between two Dravidian parties — DMK and AIADMK — and one of the biggest blunders the country did was to allow V Prabhakaran to stay in Tamil Nadu, former diplomat G Parthasarathy has said.

Parthasarathy, who was a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs in 1987, said in October 1987 the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M G Ramachandran came to a conclusion that Prabhakaran cannot achieve anything and left the next move on the Sri Lankan issue to the Centre.

“Our policy became a hostage to the rivalry between (Chief Minister) M Karunanidhi and MGR. Karunanidhi supported Siri Sabarathinam, who was also a Sri Lankan Tamil leader.

PTI

       

Sri Lanka, China are tested friends: Sri Lankan president

       
(Colombo, Xinhua, Sept. 4 2009) - Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said Friday that Sri Lanka and China are tested friends and his country is gratitude on China’s assistance to Sri Lanka in its economic and social development.

Rajapakse made the remarks when he met the visiting delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC), led by a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and Party chief of China’s Tianjin municipality Zhang Gaoli.

Rajapakse said the friendly relationship between the two countries has stood long test and the two countries are tested friends, adding that Sri Lanka has always firmly stood by and will never change its stance on one-China policy.

After conveying greetings of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Rajapakse, Zhang said China appreciated the Sri Lankan government’s firm support for the Chinese government’s stance on the issues related to Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and human rights.

Zhang congratulated the massive achievement made by the Sri Lankan government on national reconciliation and the development of the country, adding that the Chinese government will continue to support the Sri Lankan government’s efforts to defend its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Zhang also expressed his wishes of expanding cooperation between Tianjin municipality and Sri Lankan on the areas of economy, trade, tourism and education, among others.

Zhang also met Maithripala Sirisena, the general secretary of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Karu Jayasuriya, the deputy Leader of the main opposition United National Party on Friday.

The delegation, invited by Sri Lanka Freedom Party, arrived here Friday morning for a two-day good-will visit.

Xinhua

       

SITUATION WORSENS: INTERNAL SECURITY CHIEF RUSHES TO URUMQI

       
(by B.RAMAN, Friday, September 4, 2009) - The situation has deteriorated in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. The Chinese authorities admitted on the evening of September 4,2009 that there have been five deaths without specifying when the deaths occurred
and whether they were due to the incidents of needle stabbings or due to the clashes between the Han protesters and the People’s Armed Police.

2. Either way, it is a serious development.If the deaths were due to needle stabbings, this would indicate that the needles were poison-tipped. If the deaths were due to clashes, it shows the increasingly defiant mood of the Han protesters.

3. Reflecting the seriousness of the situation, China’s Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu, who is responsible for internal intelligence and internal security, rushed to Urumqi on September 4,2009, for discussions on the situation with the local authorities and to appeal to the Han community to maintain calm.

4. Annexed is a report on his arrival at Urumqi disseminated by the State-controlled Xinhua news agency on the night of September 4,2009. (4-9-09)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail:
seventyone2@gmail.com )

ANNEXURE

( Text of Xinhua despatch of September 4,2009, disseminated at 8 PM Beijing time)

China’s Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu arrived in Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Friday to direct work to defuse ongoing unrest in the city.

Meng, also a State Councillor, urged local governments and Communist Party of China (CPC) committees at all levels in Xinjiang “to restore social order as soon as possible.”

“Maintaining stability is the central task of overriding importance in Xinjiang at the present time,” he said in a meeting with local officials.

Meng said the recent syringe attacks, which were premeditated, masterminded and conducted by law-breakers and instigated by ethnic separatist forces, were a continuation of the July 5 incident in the city. He said their purpose was to
undermine ethnic unity.

“Fellow citizens of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang should sharpen vigilance and not be fooled by law-breakers,” he said.

The police chief said legal proceedings against suspects arrested in the July 5 violence should be accelerated. Those who were responsible should be discovered and murderers should be punished according to the law.

Meng held discussions with Urumqi residents during which he said traffic controls imposed in the city on Thursday aimed to ensure normal social order and asked for their understanding, support and cooperation.

He also warned “those involved in violence, assaults, vandalism, looting and burning, and those who disrupt social order by different means or undermine ethnic unity, shall be punished according to the law without exception, whatever their ethnicity is.”

B.Raman’s Blog

  • Is China itching to wage war on India? - Brahma Chellaney, Far Eastern Economic Review - Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
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