Shehbaz Sharif’s 'Chatukarita' Springs From a Hallowed Tradition

Pakistan is back to its artifice of embarrassing flattery and fawning over US presidents, writes Raghav Bahl.

Shehbaz Sharif. 

(Photo: Deeksha Malhotra/Altered by The Quint)

It’s a surreal video! US President Donald Trump inviting Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to step up and speak the proverbial “few words”. If you haven’t seen Sharif’s cameo, click right now, but then return to this piece. To refresh memories, here are a few snatches from that speech:

Shehbaz Sharif: Today, again, I would like to nominate this great President for the Nobel Peace Prize … I would like to salute you for your exemplary leadership, visionary leadership. And I think that you are the man this world needed most at this point in time. The world would always remember you as a man who did everything, went out of the way, to stop seven and today, eight wars … Had it not been for this gentleman, not only, who knows, India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers. Had he not intervened along with his wonderful team during those four days, the war could have escalated to a level, who would have lived to tell what happened? I think history will remember (you) in golden words.

Pakistan’s storied newspaper, Dawn, went ballistic. Here are curated excerpts from an editorial: By conventional diplomatic standards, PM Shehbaz’s remarks were absurd. No leader in that room — not Sisi, not Macron, not Erdoğan — matched that tone of unrestrained flattery. In a forum built for multilateral gravity, the premier’s effusive praise seemed theatrically misplaced, bordering on parody. To many observers, the moment seemed humiliating: a prime minister of a nuclear-armed state reduced to flattery before a reality-TV-styled president. The hall buzzed with disbelief. Diplomats whispered; social media mocked. Yet the only man who mattered in that room smiled. And in geopolitics, sometimes one man’s applause outweighs a world’s laughter.

It’s not often that Donald Trump gets overwhelmed. But Shehbaz Sharif’s chatukarita (it’s colloquial Hindi for “embarrassing flattery”) did just that. Trump chortled: “I did not expect this. Let's go home. Nothing more I have to say. Goodbye everybody. That was really beautiful.”

Did Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif do something unusual? No, he was merely being faithful to a long tradition, dating all the way back to 1953.

1953: When Ayub Khan Offered to Put His Army Under American Control

At Independence, Pakistan was a weak, orphaned nation, geographically split in two distant fragments, wrenched malnourished from the womb of the much bigger mother country, India. So, its powerful and charismatic Army Chief, General Ayub Khan, trekked to America – some say, “uninvited” – to cajole and beg for arms from Uncle Sam. He interacted mainly with Assistant Secretary of State Byroade, whose memo recorded Khan’s quest. When the Americans sought to delay and distract Khan by offering to take him on field inspections, he is thought to have blurted out, in craven frustration: “For Christ’s sake, I did not come here to look at barracks. Our army can be your army if you want us. But let us make a decision.”

While General Ayub Khan’s abject plea to surrender his army to American control stays the “gold standard” in chatukarita (embarrassing subservience), it should be noted, in all fairness, that Byroade did not record these exact words. But over time, Khan’s “our army can be your army” line, whether said explicitly or implied, has become (in)famous diplomatic folklore.

Once he became President, Ayub Khan continued to unashamedly woo America. On a visit to the Kennedy White House, he fawned: “Pakistan’s destiny lies in friendship with the United States … if there is any trouble in Asia, the only country that you can even put your foot into, the only country that will stand by you, is Pakistan.”

1969: Yahya Khan Continues With The Seduction

General Yahya Khan, who succeeded Ayub, tried very hard to ingratiate himself with President Nixon. Raising a toast in 1969, he beseeched: “We are grateful for the generous assistance your country has given us in the past … our main hope for preventing the rate of development from slipping below the rate of population growth is the continued availability of aid (from) America.”

When Indian forces over-ran Pakistan’s military resistance to liberate East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in December 1971, Khan trotted out his begging hat: “In this critical hour for Pakistan, I request Your Excellency to do whatever you can to relieve the pressure from our borders. There is need for urgent action to issue a stern warning to Russia and India.”

1999: Nawaz Sharif Gets Desperate, Setting Up The Template For Younger Brother

But the piece de’ resistance belongs to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the elder brother of current star actor, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Army Chief Pervez Musharraf had clandestinely attacked India at Kargil, throwing Nawaz under the bus. His desperation is vividly described by President Bill Clinton in his memoirs: “He (Nawaz) called me and asked if he could come to Washington on July 4. I told Sharif that if he wanted me to spend American Independence Day with him, he had to come knowing two things: first, he had to agree to withdraw his troops back across the Line of Control; second, I would not agree to intervene in the Kashmir dispute, especially under circumstances that appeared to reward Pakistan’s wrongful incursion.”

Nawaz Sharif landed up at White House. As per Dawn, “Sharif asked again to be left alone (with Clinton). He then briefed the president on his frantic efforts … to allow Pakistan to withdraw with some saving of face.” Of course, Musharraf later castigated Nawaz for “running to Washington” and capitulating.

For a very brief period, during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reign, the supplicant’s chant was replaced by bluster: “We’re not your hired guns anymore. Are we your slaves that we would do anything you say? The moment a government is perceived as a puppet of the Americans, it loses credibility.”

Unfortunately, it was Imran Khan who lost his office and liberty. He is now languishing in jail. And Pakistan leaders, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at Sharm el-Sheikh, are back to the artifice they’ve perfected over decades – chatukarita, embarrassing flattery and fawning over American presidents.

History repeats, first as tragedy, and then, continuously, as farce!