There is a change in Pakistan where the civil society is slowly gaining ground, but the world needs to change its policies towards the country to make it self-reliant, instead of bailing it out, say experts on Pakistan.
They also maintained that there is a need to be more realistic as far as India-Pakistan relations are concerned. The competing, conflicting narratives of history in both the countries make any sort of “grand reconciliation” not possible in the short term, though increasing contacts among the youth offer hope.
In a session titled The Pakistan Paradox on the opening day of the Jaipur Literature Festival on Thursday, the panel, which was moderated by former Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, discussed the likely course that the Pakistani nation could take, and what the rest of the world must do.
Pakistan’s Double Narrative
Pakistani journalist and author Reema Abbasi said it was unfortunate that other aspects of Pakistani life and society were being ignored with everything seen through the focus of terrorism, which she conceded was a major issue.
The author of Historic Temples in Pakistan: A Call to Conscience, stressed on the recovery of the plurality of Pakistani society.
Reema Abbasi, Pakistani Journalist and AuthorVery few students in Pakistan know about the plurality of their country...(the two narratives of Pakistan) are completely at odds with each other.
She said the state’s narrative was paid more attention to by the international community over the public narrative, but this had “completely changed”, especially after the attack on the Peshawar school in December 2014. “Civil society, activists and media are getting more empowered,” she maintained.
India, The Hostile “Other” for Pakistan
South Asia security expert and author of The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience (2015), Christophe Jaffrelot, maintained that in Pakistan a broader establishment of the military and some political leaders still held sway.
The French security expert said that Pakistan offered plenty of paradoxes and complications but it had become a sort of a “nation state” by now having gotten over its fixation over defining its identity based on India as a hostile “other”.
Christophe Jaffrelot, South Asia Security ExpertIndia was a threat to Pakistan in the 1970s...today it’s more complex. Balochistan is gone, Karachi is a complicated game but the rest is some kind of nation-state...time has made a contribution.
Jaffrelot also maintained that as far as India-Pakistan relations were concerned, Afghanistan was a key issue.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kabul and agreed to provide helicopters to the Afghan forces, and the attacks on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in Punjab and the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan followed, he said.
Christophe Jaffrelot, South Asia Security ExpertPathankot and Mazar-e-Sharif (attacks on an Indian Air Force base in Punjab and consulate in Afghanistan) came after (Indian Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s visit to Kabul, where he had offered the Afghans military helicopters. This was not taken in a very good way by Pakistan army, who have a constant temptation to use jihadi groups against India.
He also noted that while Pakistan acts against some militant groups that “have gotten out of hand”, it can set up new ones.
Jaffrelot also contended that the world must change its policy towards Pakistan, which was at a significant crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.
“Apart from remittances from Pakistanis in the Gulf, outsiders pay for Pakistan, be it the US, Saudi Arabia, IMF and China,” he noted, urging the world powers to “stop helping Pakistan in the way you are”.
“Its tax-GDP ratio is the lowest in the world. It needs to focus on fiscal reforms,” he said.
Shyam Saran noted that Pakistan was the only country that figured both in China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt” and oceangoing “Maritime Silk Road”. US-based history professor Venkat Dhulipala, meanwhile, contended that the idea of India as a “threatening outsider that keeps Pakistan united was oversold”.
Dhulipala, author of the critically acclaimed Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (2015), argued that Pakistan sees itself on the way to its pre-eminence in the Islamic world based on its possession of nuclear weapons, and this was also becoming a “driver for Pakistani politics”.
Stressing that the world must take this into account, he also appeared pessimistic of India-Pakistan ties given the stress of competing narratives of history.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)