Pakistan’s delusion drip must stop for its own sake
Its existence is basically a negation of India — an umbilical cord it hasn’t cut off to keep itself relevant, a hyphenation it craves
It was the early 1960s. The Cold War was hot. Espionage was a household term. The US wanted closer surveillance over the Soviets. They wanted to fly their spy planes, but thanks to the Atlantic Ocean, they needed an airbase somewhere close. They began surveying areas in west Pakistan and finally zeroed in on Peshawar. They immediately asked the then Pakistan president, Ayub Khan, for a 10-year lease to construct a base — conveniently named Little USA — which could house 800 US personnel. It would have a golf course and a movie theatre too. Khan readily agreed.
The rent-seeker of everything nasty in its backyard was happy to seek rent. Hence, foreign aid flew, military assurances were made, the Pakistan-friendly Indus Waters Treaty was signed, and, very unexpectedly, the Republicans lost the elections in the US. A new guy with a noticeable tilt towards India walked into the Oval Office. The new US president, John F Kennedy, liked Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India.
It was an adversarial situation for Pakistan. The Kashmir issue was still unsolved, and US foreign aid to India continued unabated. Khan made a flurry of trips to the US to get things back on track. On one such trip, he had his newly minted foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, with him. When Bhutto met JFK in the White House, the latter saw a Pakistani who was articulate, well-versed in English, and so, he humoured him: “Too bad you are not American, because if you were, I would have appointed you to my cabinet.” Bhutto shot back, “President Kennedy, if I was American, I would not be in your Cabinet but I would be the president of the United States!”
There is a term in colloquial Hindi, often used in North India — hawabaazi, or the act of airing empty boasts. I don’t think there is any other word that accurately describes Pakistani bluster. Funnily, it continues to this day. There is a reason for this. Pakistan has forever denied its roots, its civilisational reality. A self-proclaimed orphan, it has been searching for its parents among petty invaders, beginning with Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, a 7th century military commander who died at the age of 19 while returning to Arabia after looting Multan. They call him the first Pakistani.
Even much later, its founding fathers somehow convinced the masses with the opium of a two-nation theory, a theory that died the day it was born when India decided to coexist with its various faiths in 1947. There is little reason for its existence. It isn’t the pan-Islamic vanguard State it wished to be, barely any Muslims from around the world are queuing up at Pakistani consulates to get permanent residency. When Syrians were ousted from their homeland, they didn’t flock to the Karachi port.
Its existence is basically a negation of India — an umbilical cord it hasn’t cut off to keep itself relevant, a hyphenation it craves. So, when India tries to dehyphenate, it attacks us like a jilted lover or an estranged child. And it succeeds in getting attention. It is also done often to recharge the public-perception batteries of its army.
No wonder it has not named its missiles after great Islamic rulers like Akbar or Shahjahan, but chose Ghaznavi (Mahmud of Ghazni), Ghauri (Muhammad Ghori) and Abdali (Ahmad Shah Abdali), all of whom had invaded India from the West, plundered, massacred, and left. Its missiles are named with just one target in mind — a past it wants to erase.
It is this void it tries to compensate for with its bluster. This void is the reason why it must convince its constituents that it has won all the wars. Democracy is too leaky to keep this delusion on. So, it needs frequent doses of martial law to keep the intravenous drip of this opium 24x7. That is why its director general of inter-services public relations must wake up at 4:15 am to inform its people that all Indian missiles have been intercepted over the Nur Khan base. If there were no live telecast of the India-Pakistan ODI World Cup matches, Pakistan would have convinced its people that it won all eight matches, and eventually, Babar Azam would be elevated to the rank of field marshal.
No wonder, they win the narrative war often. It’s their most potent weapon. That’s how they have kept their country together. They have sharpened this over 78 years — how to sell a lie to your constituents — a skill which even the foreign secretary of India, Vikram Misri, acknowledged in his briefings. The military regime has won back popular support; the army chief promoted himself to the rank of field marshal. Even the educated liberals in Pakistan pretend to believe this. The other smart ones have already switched passports.
How to fix this? Well, Pakistan needs to confront its past, be comfortable with it, and not be afraid to dig its earth and find a temple or a statue. It’s this forceful erasure that keeps them suspended — a confused state of existence, swinging between suicidal despair and martial race jingoism. It is like a child whose hands are held by different military dictators in different decades, with attrition of its three-digit IQ people every year to developed nations. The delusion drip needs to stop. Meanwhile, I am just thankful that we don’t need satellite images to prove the two Virat Kohli sixes at Melbourne (MCG).
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal
