Kargil And The Manufacturing Of History-I
In the spring of 1999, when the “war-like” situation erupted in Kashmir in the Kargil…Yvette Rosser @https://twitter.com/RaniRosser
Identity (Distortion & Appropriation) | 10-05-2016
http://indiafacts.org/kargil-and-the-manufacturing-of-history-i/
from the blog http://indiafacts.org/
In the spring of 1999, when the “war-like” situation erupted in Kashmir in the Kargil district, I was doing research regarding history textbooks in Bangladesh. A few weeks before I left Bangladesh, a direct bus between Dhaka to Calcutta (now Kolkata) had been officially inaugurated by Indian and Bangladeshi officials, but it was not yet running on a regular basis. My two adolescent sons, Jai and Amar were traveling with me and we took a local bus from Dhaka and the ferry to Jessore, then two bicycle driven carts, carried the family luggage to the border.
The remnants of the Old Trunk Road still winds its way from Dhaka to Lahore, though now traversing barriers erected by three nation-states. One of the most remarkable things I noticed about the Old Trunk Road was that on the Bangladeshi side of the border, there are no gigantic old shade trees lining the roadside, whereas on the Indian side there are huge trees, hundreds of years old, one after the other in two massive parallel rows on each side of the road. With trunks over two meters in diameter, they shade the street with a canopy of ancient branches.
The sudden appearance of these massive trees on the Indian side of the border reminded me of what I had heard in Dhaka a few months earlier. The gigantic trees along the road to Calcutta had, on the Bangladeshi side, been cut down “to make furniture for ruling politicians.” I was told that General Zia-ur Rahman had them felled to widen the road, but the roadwork was never completed.
General Ziaur Rahman
General Zia was the military ruler who usurped political power shortly after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangabandhu – the ‘father of the nation”, whose Awami League had won the elections in Pakistan, the denial of which had led to the civil war. My friends in Dhaka told me that years before, huge trees like those found on the Indian side had also lined the road in Bangladesh, but they were now destroyed.
While riding the bus from Bangladesh to Calcutta, I had decided that I wanted to take advantage of the new bus service between Delhi and Lahore, inaugurated two months earlier in February 1999 by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. I had read the newspaper accounts of his historic trip while I was in Cox’s Bazaar, with its miles of uninterrupted sandy beach on the Burmese border. I wanted to retrace the post-nuclear bus diplomacy that in February and March had seemed so hopeful.
Less than three months later, India and Pakistan were once again locked in a bloody military engagement over Kashmir. For over a month, news in Dhaka coming from Kashmir was unusually ominous, though as a rule, Bangladeshi newspapers generally carry articles critical of the Indian army’s actions in that beleaguered state. By the time I was back in India, in early June, Kargil had grabbed the headlines of the Indian dailies with a vengeance. It seemed as if the whole country was ready to take up arms and march off to the Line of Control.
Though editorials and articles in The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, and other newspapers brought the BJP government under fire as well as the failure of RAW- India’s intelligence wing, to detect the intrusion, no one criticized the fighting forces.
In the spring of 1999, when the “war-like” situation erupted in Kashmir in the Kargil district, I was doing research regarding history textbooks in Bangladesh. A few weeks before I left Bangladesh, a direct bus between Dhaka to Calcutta (now Kolkata) had been officially inaugurated by Indian and Bangladeshi officials, but it was not yet running on a regular basis. My two adolescent sons, Jai and Amar were traveling with me and we took a local bus from Dhaka and the ferry to Jessore, then two bicycle driven carts, carried the family luggage to the border.
The remnants of the Old Trunk Road still winds its way from Dhaka to Lahore, though now traversing barriers erected by three nation-states. One of the most remarkable things I noticed about the Old Trunk Road was that on the Bangladeshi side of the border, there are no gigantic old shade trees lining the roadside, whereas on the Indian side there are huge trees, hundreds of years old, one after the other in two massive parallel rows on each side of the road. With trunks over two meters in diameter, they shade the street with a canopy of ancient branches.
The sudden appearance of these massive trees on the Indian side of the border reminded me of what I had heard in Dhaka a few months earlier. The gigantic trees along the road to Calcutta had, on the Bangladeshi side, been cut down “to make furniture for ruling politicians.” I was told that General Zia-ur Rahman had them felled to widen the road, but the roadwork was never completed.
General Ziaur Rahman
General Zia was the military ruler who usurped political power shortly after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangabandhu – the ‘father of the nation”, whose Awami League had won the elections in Pakistan, the denial of which had led to the civil war. My friends in Dhaka told me that years before, huge trees like those found on the Indian side had also lined the road in Bangladesh, but they were now destroyed.
While riding the bus from Bangladesh to Calcutta, I had decided that I wanted to take advantage of the new bus service between Delhi and Lahore, inaugurated two months earlier in February 1999 by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. I had read the newspaper accounts of his historic trip while I was in Cox’s Bazaar, with its miles of uninterrupted sandy beach on the Burmese border. I wanted to retrace the post-nuclear bus diplomacy that in February and March had seemed so hopeful.
Less than three months later, India and Pakistan were once again locked in a bloody military engagement over Kashmir. For over a month, news in Dhaka coming from Kashmir was unusually ominous, though as a rule, Bangladeshi newspapers generally carry articles critical of the Indian army’s actions in that beleaguered state. By the time I was back in India, in early June, Kargil had grabbed the headlines of the Indian dailies with a vengeance. It seemed as if the whole country was ready to take up arms and march off to the Line of Control.
Though editorials and articles in The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, and other newspapers brought the BJP government under fire as well as the failure of RAW- India’s intelligence wing, to detect the intrusion, no one criticized the fighting forces.
The jawans (soldiers) were hailed as heroes. A list of the names of Indians killed fighting in Kargil was read nightly after the TV news: “Shaheeds for Bharat Mata”–a uniquely Indian mixing of religious lexicons in the service of nationalism (Shaheed is Arabic for martyr and Bharat Mata is Hindi for Mother India). There was outright outrage about the reported return of the mutilated bodies of six Indian soldiers by the Pakistani army.
Everywhere Indians expressed feelings of betrayal. There was no shortage of analysis about the crisis, much less the polarized politicizing of the issue by the opposition parties. Particularly controversial was the fact that the occupation of the mountaintops above Kargil was discovered immediately after the BJP lost support in the Parliament by only one vote.
Everywhere Indians expressed feelings of betrayal. There was no shortage of analysis about the crisis, much less the polarized politicizing of the issue by the opposition parties. Particularly controversial was the fact that the occupation of the mountaintops above Kargil was discovered immediately after the BJP lost support in the Parliament by only one vote.
Regardless of blame slinging, there was absolute unanimity regarding the bravery of Indian fighting forces, though some foolhardy Marxists and several die-hard conservative Muslim leaders, risking condemnation in the rising patriotic climate, continued to question the justness of the Kashmir cause for which their countrymen were dying.
However, among the majority of the population, the patriotic response was staggering. Prisoners were donating blood, children from across India were writing letters to the front, tens of thousands of public servants voluntarily donated a day’s wages —equaling crores of rupees. Trade unions, industrialists, corporations, foreign investors, all presented checks to the Prime Minister, donations to the war effort and offerings for the families of slain soldiers.
Every night the news was filled with images of funeral pyres burning in villages from one end of the nation to the other. From north to south the media showed families grieving slain sons accompanied by a military escort…. The patriotism was effusive in the media, indeed, a daily barrage of highly charged patriotic journalistic propaganda-like news stories and personal biographical tributes to the martyrs for Bharat Mata filled the airwaves.
The feelings of betrayal went deep. There was cynicism that dealing with Pakistan diplomatically was a waste of time. Efforts symbolized by the bus diplomacy in February, resulting in the Lahore Declaration, were “a sham”.
However, among the majority of the population, the patriotic response was staggering. Prisoners were donating blood, children from across India were writing letters to the front, tens of thousands of public servants voluntarily donated a day’s wages —equaling crores of rupees. Trade unions, industrialists, corporations, foreign investors, all presented checks to the Prime Minister, donations to the war effort and offerings for the families of slain soldiers.
Every night the news was filled with images of funeral pyres burning in villages from one end of the nation to the other. From north to south the media showed families grieving slain sons accompanied by a military escort…. The patriotism was effusive in the media, indeed, a daily barrage of highly charged patriotic journalistic propaganda-like news stories and personal biographical tributes to the martyrs for Bharat Mata filled the airwaves.
The feelings of betrayal went deep. There was cynicism that dealing with Pakistan diplomatically was a waste of time. Efforts symbolized by the bus diplomacy in February, resulting in the Lahore Declaration, were “a sham”.
Indians complained that the “whole farce” had been “flagrantly staged by the Pakistanis”, whose army and intelligence agency, the ISI, had “obviously been organizing the take-over of the bunkers on the heights above Kargil at the same time that Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif were shaking hands in Lahore”. I was told with remorse, that Vajpayee had even “naively written a poem for the historic event.” In New Delhi this narration of February’s naiveté was everywhere repeated, “They’ll shake your right hand in Lahore while stabbing you in the back with their left hand in Kargil.”
Several Pakistanis later told me that it was “very amateurish poetry”, one lady in Islamabad added in jest, “The poems were so bad that it forced us to attack Kargil!” Interestingly, a collection of Vajpayee’s poems was translated into Urdu for the occasion of the Lahore Bus ride, but later the Pakistani who had the book of poems published in Urdu was threatened and had to flee to India for asylum! (Unfortunately, though innocent of doing anything except spreading poetry, India refused to give the Urdu poet Aftab Hussain asylum; though he had been threatened with death in his own country for helping to publish Vajpayee’s diplomacy poems. Though he was forced to escape Pakistan he was then denied sanctuary in India, but finally found asylum in Austria.)
In June 1999, in India vitriolic invectives against the “foreign mercenary mujahedeen” who were “obviously trained and supplied by Pakistan” dominated every magazine and catalyzed coffeehouse/chai shop conversations.
Several Pakistanis later told me that it was “very amateurish poetry”, one lady in Islamabad added in jest, “The poems were so bad that it forced us to attack Kargil!” Interestingly, a collection of Vajpayee’s poems was translated into Urdu for the occasion of the Lahore Bus ride, but later the Pakistani who had the book of poems published in Urdu was threatened and had to flee to India for asylum! (Unfortunately, though innocent of doing anything except spreading poetry, India refused to give the Urdu poet Aftab Hussain asylum; though he had been threatened with death in his own country for helping to publish Vajpayee’s diplomacy poems. Though he was forced to escape Pakistan he was then denied sanctuary in India, but finally found asylum in Austria.)
In June 1999, in India vitriolic invectives against the “foreign mercenary mujahedeen” who were “obviously trained and supplied by Pakistan” dominated every magazine and catalyzed coffeehouse/chai shop conversations.
There was no doubt in the mind of every Indian with whom I spoke that Pakistani arms and supply lines had assisted and supported the military incursion beyond the LOC into Indian territory at Kargil. Both the Indian and international media documented Pakistani army regulars fighting alongside the “Arabs” cum “Afghans” cum “bearded jihadi foreign elements” –a claim that the Pakistani government vehemently maintained.
Amid a tsunami of Pakistani bashing in Delhi, I tried repeatedly to book my ticket on the Delhi-Lahore “Diplomacy Bus” to continue my dissertation research in Pakistan. I put my name on a waiting list at Ambedkar Station near Delhi Gate and waited, calling daily for an update on an empty seat.
Amid a tsunami of Pakistani bashing in Delhi, I tried repeatedly to book my ticket on the Delhi-Lahore “Diplomacy Bus” to continue my dissertation research in Pakistan. I put my name on a waiting list at Ambedkar Station near Delhi Gate and waited, calling daily for an update on an empty seat.
The Delhi Transport Corporation officer informed me that since the outbreak of hostilities the outbound buses to Lahore had been booked solid. For the last two months, tourists from Pakistan, taking advantage of the novelty of the convenient and economical new bus service, had come to India to visit family, but now they found themselves in hostile territory. Abandoning travel plans, Pakistani nationals were quickly trying to get home before the outbreak of what might turn into a full-fledged war.
Two years before, during the summer of 1997, I had met numerous friendly and intellectually vibrant individuals in Pakistan and was looking forward to continuing my work there. I had to assure my worried mother via a long distance telephone call from Delhi that I wouldn’t be caught in a nuclear holocaust in the Subcontinent or kidnapped by Islamic extremists. My mother doesn’t mind when I travel in India, but has fears when I go to Pakistan.
However, I had assured her that statistically I would be more likely to die in a traffic accident in Austin than be attacked by terrorists in Karachi. She wasn’t convinced, having been duly impressed by media images of Islamic militants.
Two years before, during the summer of 1997, I had met numerous friendly and intellectually vibrant individuals in Pakistan and was looking forward to continuing my work there. I had to assure my worried mother via a long distance telephone call from Delhi that I wouldn’t be caught in a nuclear holocaust in the Subcontinent or kidnapped by Islamic extremists. My mother doesn’t mind when I travel in India, but has fears when I go to Pakistan.
However, I had assured her that statistically I would be more likely to die in a traffic accident in Austin than be attacked by terrorists in Karachi. She wasn’t convinced, having been duly impressed by media images of Islamic militants.
Nonetheless, I was determined to go to Pakistan via the Delhi-Lahore bus. This had been my intention when I read about the inauguration of the bus in February while I was waiting out the BNP-led hartals in Cox’s Bazaar.
I felt it was important to symbolically support the fledging and now seemingly foolhardy attempt at diplomacy between these two hostile nations that have so much to gain from a lessening of tensions. Since the outbreak of fighting in Kashmir, there had not been an empty seat on the bus to Lahore. My sons flew to the USA the second week of June and I waited eagerly for a cancellation or an empty seat on the diplomacy bus to Pakistan. I read the newspapers and pondered the events playing out under my nose.
George Fernandes, one of the most enigmatic Indian politicians of the late twentieth century was a whipping boy of the liberal and vocal Indian media. A former union organizer Fernandes was the Defense Minister for the BJP government during the Kargil crisis.
George Fernandes, one of the most enigmatic Indian politicians of the late twentieth century was a whipping boy of the liberal and vocal Indian media. A former union organizer Fernandes was the Defense Minister for the BJP government during the Kargil crisis.
The determination and confidence of the government masked the fact that immediately before the discovery of the takeover of the mountain-tops above Kargil the opposition parties had called for new elections. Nonetheless, the BJP, whom the BBC and the rest of the western media invariably refer to as the “Hindu nationalist” or “Hindu fundamentalist party” were at the helm, awaiting the now postponed elections, while orchestrating a response to the “war-like-situation” in Kargil.
Their handling of the crisis and the fact that they managed to remain relatively bipartisan, strengthened their political viability. But in Kargil, it was all-out war as the international community watched these two newly nuclearized nations fight it out on the world’s most scenic battlefield.
Their handling of the crisis and the fact that they managed to remain relatively bipartisan, strengthened their political viability. But in Kargil, it was all-out war as the international community watched these two newly nuclearized nations fight it out on the world’s most scenic battlefield.
Interestingly, the jihadis who entered the Jammu and Kashmir in Kargil are without question Sunni Muslims, whereas the inhabitants of Kargil are mostly Shi’a. Many Shi’a from Kargil complained that the Pakistani backed Deobandi militants didn’t mind shelling the homes of the local Kashmiris since they were Shi’a. This item was in the Indian news, but I did not hear it mentioned in Pakistani newspapers.
After over a week of waiting, I was finally able to reserve a seat on the Delhi-Lahore diplomacy bus. At 5 AM on June 18, my dear old friend, Mrs. Santosh Sharma, one of the most remarkable self-made woman success stories in modern India, and her family, dropped me off at the locked gate outside Ambedkar station where a uniformed guard asked to see the ticket I had purchased the previous day. I waved goodbye to the white Maruti van, as my friends drove away. I rolled my luggage across the deserted parking lot towards the bus at the far end where people were congregating.
The passengers milled around waiting for our luggage to be inspected. Though there was an x-ray machine, like those used in airports, it was out of order. The Delhi Transport Corporation personnel opened each bag. There was also a healthy looking German Shepherd sniffing our luggage. At 6:02, exactly two minutes late, the loaded bus pulled out of the station with a military jeep as an escort, clearing the road for our early morning exit from Delhi.
For the twelve-hour trip I sat next to a young man from old Delhi, a slim cheerful fellow in his mid twenties named Shehzad. He had rishtadar (family members) in Karachi and a big bag of salwar-kameez suits that he was bringing to sell in Pakistan. He showed me photos of his sisters and nieces and his home in old Delhi with a fridge and chipped marble floors. We chatted in Hindi almost the whole way except while we were watching the film.
The choice of films was quite interesting. Henna, made by Raj Kapoor’s company, starred Zeba Bakhtiyar a Pakistani actress and an Indian actor. The protagonist was an industrialist in Srinagar who was engaged to marry, but had an automobile accident on his way to the wedding. Washed into the Indus, unconscious, he floated downstream on a log that carried him across the border into Pakistani occupied Kashmir, where he was rescued by a rural mountain family of goat herders. Due to his injuries, he had amnesia and couldn’t remember his name or identity or how he fell into the river.
Rishi Kapoor in Heena
After several heroic episodes, the family adopted him, as their own and after some endearing segments, arranges his marriage to their daughter, Heena. Just as the wedding begins, suddenly, dramatically, his memory returns. In a moment of heightened drama, he tells his adopted family that he is Gopal, or some other Hindu name, and that he has a fiancée in Srinagar. They are of course shocked and some of the villagers, thinking he must be an Indian spy, alert the authorities who, of course, are corrupt government officials.
At any rate, as we rolled west across India, the drama on the small screen at the front of the bus became tragically relevant. The hero, instead of marrying the young Pakistani woman, had to flee from the Pakistani authorities back to India. After the lovely Heena freed her sorrowful ex-bridegroom from jail while they sang a soulful duet, she and her family helped him escape across the border. Tragically, at the last minute there was firing from both sides and Heena is killed.
The Indian actor, standing between two barbed-wire fences cries out, “Kis ki goli? Pakistan ki goli? India ki goli? Nahin, nasfrat ki goli ne Heena ko mar diya.” (Was it Pakistan’s bullet? Was it India’s bullet? No, a bullet of hatred has killed Heena.) I cried at the conclusion, but then I always cry at sad movies, even if they are sappy and overly dramatic. I looked around the bus, and I may have been the only one with tears in my eyes. Meanwhile Shehzad and I spent hours talking as we drove through the western Indian states of Haryana and Panjab.
Most of the people on the bus were Pakistani nationals returning home from visiting their Indian relatives in Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, or other specified places. Pakistanis visiting India can only go to the places indicated on their passports; the same applies to Indians traveling in Pakistan, they are not allowed to venture outside the areas for which they secured permission. The couple sitting in the seats across the aisle of the bus, asked me to help them fill in the disembarkation cards we were given–the very same cards distributed on airplanes flying into Pakistan. The man and his wife were both unable to read or write and could not complete their forms. They handed me their passports and I filled in the information.
The man was born in Delhi in 1937. His wife was ten years younger, born in Lahore. They said that they couldn’t sign their names, so after I filled out the passport information in English, the fellow behind us signed their names for them in Urdu. My seatmate, Shehzad did not read Urdu, he writes in the Devanagari script. Though he couldn’t speak English, he filled out his disembarkation card neatly in Roman script.
Shehzad was on his way to Karachi for the marriage of a cousin. He was very talkative with bright eyes and a thin handsome face. He was also a very patriotic Indian. He told me that he had been to Pakistan several times and this was his second trip on the diplomacy bus. He said that he “hated Pakistan”. He kept repeating, “Mera Bharat Mahan!” (My India is great!)”. At one point Shehzad began chanting, “Hindustan zindabad, Pakistan murdabad!” (Long Live India, Death to Pakistan!) I told him he had better be quiet, because he would not be welcomed in Pakistan if he said such things, someone might overhear him.
He didn’t seem to care and repeated it several more times, laughing. When we arrived in Lahore I heard him jokingly tell the driver and the other two fellows who had come along on the bus, all employees of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), that the American memsahib had warned him to “chip-chaap, mat kaho” (be quiet, don’t speak). He again repeated the zindabad-murdabad slogan and laughed.
Shehzad genuinely seemed to love India and was quite well informed about Indian politics. He may have been showing off a bit for the Pakistanis and DTC personnel on the bus, but his patriotism and preference for India did not seem superficial or hypocritical. Quite probably, the fighting in Kargil intensified his need to assert his patriotic identity, especially while in route to enemy territory.
A few other India nationals were on the bus that day. An elderly Sikh couple was traveling to the shrine of Guru Nanak. I certainly didn’t speak to everyone, but there were at least two Indian-born Muslim women on the bus who had cross-border marriages and returned to India yearly to visit their parents.
There was one remarkable exchange in the ladies restroom at the border crossing on the Pakistani side. Two other women were waiting for the facilities, one was the elderly Sikh lady, and the other had a dark shawl tucked around her ears in a traditional Islamic style. For some reason, they felt compelled to tell me that they were Indian, not Pakistani, and that India was better than Pakistan. The Sikh lady whispered,“Pakistan bigara desh hai” (spoiled country).
They didn’t, however say anything out loud. Each casually approached me as I waited and shaking their heads and raising their eyebrows to get my attention, whispered comments to me critical of Pakistan, then looking around nervously, motioned for me to remain quiet. I never had another chance to query them, though I did find out that the younger woman was an Indian from Agra who had married a man in Lahore.
Meanwhile, while we had been traveling west across Indian Punjab, Shehzad and I talked about current events in India: The buffoonery of Laloo Prasad Yadav, an infamously corrupt politician in the impoverished state of Bihar. We both agreed it was ironic that an Italian, Sonia Gandhi could be the next Prime Minister. Shehzad was well informed about Indian politics. Interestingly, he told me that when the BJP was in power in Delhi, there were less instances of anti-Muslim violence.
I was surprised that he, as a Muslim, would say such a thing and asked him more questions. He said that the Congress had an agenda and needed to keep Muslims feeling insecure to exploit their votes. But the BJP had a vested interest in keeping the peace in the Muslim community. I asked him why and he explained that the BJP is expected to be anti-Muslim and any problems would automatically be blamed on their communal ideology; so there is greater effort by BJP, as the ruling party, to prevent communal disturbances.
I told him that the prevailing view in the popular media is that the Sangh Parivar made provocative statements against Muslims and incited violence. He repeated that there was less violence in Delhi when BJP was in power. I asked him if it was because Muslims were intimidated and were less likely to make demands from a BJP regime, or perhaps because the law and order situation was better under BJP control. He said it “wasn’t from fear”. He said he hoped that BJP were less corrupt than the other governments.
I asked him which party was better and he said less violence is better and during BJP rule there had been less communal violence. I asked him if he voted for BJP and he said he didn’t vote. Shehzad was a very secular and very nationalist young man. One of his comments I found to be particularly profound. He said that the biggest problem with Muslims in India is that they are under the influence of conservative clerics who often express support for Pakistan.
A couple of weeks later, a cell phone conversation intercepted between General Parvez Musharraf, the Pakistani army chief calling from Beijing and General Aziz back in Pakistan would prove Fernandes’ theory to be seemingly on target. Though many in Pakistan doubted the authenticity of the recordings, others seemed to think that they could have been real. In their conversation, the two generals indicated that Sharif was not calling the shots and was in fact uninformed about the military build-up. This was again, seemingly substantiated by developments after Sharif returned from a whirlwind visit on the fourth of July to consult the US president.
Sharif promised to pull the mujahideen back across the Line of Control in exchange for simply a promise from Clinton that he would take a personal interest in the Kashmir problem. The army responded that Sharif did not have the power to issue such an order. The Indians pointed out the irony of the conflicting claims, that if the infiltrators were not under the control of Pakistan how either Sharif or the Pakistan Army could exert any control? The situation was full of duplicity.
Most of the citizens of Pakistan and all of the newspapers, opined that the midnight mad dash to DC was foolhardy. The Pakistani military declared they would not withdraw. Spokesmen for the “Islamic guerrillas”, as they were called by a BBC correspondent, or jihadis in the liberal Pakistani English press, were indignant that Sharif had the audacity to think he could speak for them. Initially, people were sarcastic about the trip to the US saying that Mrs. Sharif simply wanted to go on a shopping trip in America. Others were incensed and warned Sharif not to return to Pakistan or he would be hung for selling out the brave freedom fighters.
The military, the mujahideen, the Pakistani press all condemned Sharif’s US trip as an unnecessary diplomatic manipulation of a military situation that Pakistan seemed to be winning, and a blatant capitulation to Washington and India. However, within only a few days of Sharif’s return, after meeting with top military officials, the militants began a well-publicized retreat from the heights above Kargil. How much Sharif knew in February, while he was shaking hands with the Indian Prime Minster was not known and hotly disputed.
In fact, from his jail cell, several weeks after he had been deposed by General Musharraf, in October 1999, Nawaz Sharif claimed again that he had been duped by Musharraf who had orchestrated the ill-conceived Kargil plan. General Musharraf, who had become the self-appointed head of state, publicly refuted Sharif’s claim, asserting that the military maneuvers could not be undertaken without the consent of the Prime Minister. I’m reminded of Pakistan’s internal contradictions and claims regarding the responsibility for Operation Gibraltar leading to the 1965 war with India.
Disclaimer: The facts and opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article.
Yvette Rosser
Dr. Yvette Claire Rosser, also known as Ram Rani is an American writer and scholar. She identifies as a Hindu and teaches Hinduism to Westerners. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “Curriculum as Destiny: Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh,” is a study of the politics of history in South Asia. She’s currently working on her next book on the politicization of history textbooks in the subcontinent.
Kargil And The Manufacturing Of History-II
Additional military police met the bus and stood guard while we ate. The Indian government was not taking any chances.
The diplomacy bus was sparkling new as I rode from Delhi to Lahore in June 1999, our high profile vehicle had a military escort all the way from Delhi to the Pakistani border –a shiny new beige Indian Tata Jeep with four soldiers in the back, two of whom were Sikhs, a soldier in the passenger seat and a jawan driver, six military men in all. They had rifles, revolvers, and a red police light flashing on the top of the jeep. Whenever there was a traffic jam or trucks blocking the road, they would turn on the lights and sirens, lean out of their seats, several waving lathis (bamboo poles) high in the air, not threatening, just waving them and yelling for the drivers to move over. Amazingly, on crowded Indian roads, heavy traffic immediately made way for us. We stopped for breakfast and lunch at tourist restaurants, where my young seat-mate, Shehzad, whom I had gladly befriended, and I shared a table. Additional military police met the bus and stood guard while we ate. The Indian government was not taking any chances.
This was definitely a bus that ran on schedule. A clean new Ashok-Leyland bus with the flags of both nations brightly painted on both sides and front and back, Pakistan’s green crescent and India’s tri-colors, with poles crossing, proclaiming our diplomatic mission. In India, as people we passed recognized the ‘diplomacy bus’ moving along the highway, they would smile and wave and point to us, motioning to their friends who would also smile and wave.
After over a week of waiting, I was finally able to reserve a seat on the Delhi-Lahore diplomacy bus. At 5 AM on June 18, my dear old friend, Mrs. Santosh Sharma, one of the most remarkable self-made woman success stories in modern India, and her family, dropped me off at the locked gate outside Ambedkar station where a uniformed guard asked to see the ticket I had purchased the previous day. I waved goodbye to the white Maruti van, as my friends drove away. I rolled my luggage across the deserted parking lot towards the bus at the far end where people were congregating.
The passengers milled around waiting for our luggage to be inspected. Though there was an x-ray machine, like those used in airports, it was out of order. The Delhi Transport Corporation personnel opened each bag. There was also a healthy looking German Shepherd sniffing our luggage. At 6:02, exactly two minutes late, the loaded bus pulled out of the station with a military jeep as an escort, clearing the road for our early morning exit from Delhi.
For the twelve-hour trip I sat next to a young man from old Delhi, a slim cheerful fellow in his mid twenties named Shehzad. He had rishtadar (family members) in Karachi and a big bag of salwar-kameez suits that he was bringing to sell in Pakistan. He showed me photos of his sisters and nieces and his home in old Delhi with a fridge and chipped marble floors. We chatted in Hindi almost the whole way except while we were watching the film.
The choice of films was quite interesting. Henna, made by Raj Kapoor’s company, starred Zeba Bakhtiyar a Pakistani actress and an Indian actor. The protagonist was an industrialist in Srinagar who was engaged to marry, but had an automobile accident on his way to the wedding. Washed into the Indus, unconscious, he floated downstream on a log that carried him across the border into Pakistani occupied Kashmir, where he was rescued by a rural mountain family of goat herders. Due to his injuries, he had amnesia and couldn’t remember his name or identity or how he fell into the river.
Rishi Kapoor in Heena
After several heroic episodes, the family adopted him, as their own and after some endearing segments, arranges his marriage to their daughter, Heena. Just as the wedding begins, suddenly, dramatically, his memory returns. In a moment of heightened drama, he tells his adopted family that he is Gopal, or some other Hindu name, and that he has a fiancée in Srinagar. They are of course shocked and some of the villagers, thinking he must be an Indian spy, alert the authorities who, of course, are corrupt government officials.
At any rate, as we rolled west across India, the drama on the small screen at the front of the bus became tragically relevant. The hero, instead of marrying the young Pakistani woman, had to flee from the Pakistani authorities back to India. After the lovely Heena freed her sorrowful ex-bridegroom from jail while they sang a soulful duet, she and her family helped him escape across the border. Tragically, at the last minute there was firing from both sides and Heena is killed.
The Indian actor, standing between two barbed-wire fences cries out, “Kis ki goli? Pakistan ki goli? India ki goli? Nahin, nasfrat ki goli ne Heena ko mar diya.” (Was it Pakistan’s bullet? Was it India’s bullet? No, a bullet of hatred has killed Heena.) I cried at the conclusion, but then I always cry at sad movies, even if they are sappy and overly dramatic. I looked around the bus, and I may have been the only one with tears in my eyes. Meanwhile Shehzad and I spent hours talking as we drove through the western Indian states of Haryana and Panjab.
Most of the people on the bus were Pakistani nationals returning home from visiting their Indian relatives in Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, or other specified places. Pakistanis visiting India can only go to the places indicated on their passports; the same applies to Indians traveling in Pakistan, they are not allowed to venture outside the areas for which they secured permission. The couple sitting in the seats across the aisle of the bus, asked me to help them fill in the disembarkation cards we were given–the very same cards distributed on airplanes flying into Pakistan. The man and his wife were both unable to read or write and could not complete their forms. They handed me their passports and I filled in the information.
The man was born in Delhi in 1937. His wife was ten years younger, born in Lahore. They said that they couldn’t sign their names, so after I filled out the passport information in English, the fellow behind us signed their names for them in Urdu. My seatmate, Shehzad did not read Urdu, he writes in the Devanagari script. Though he couldn’t speak English, he filled out his disembarkation card neatly in Roman script.
Shehzad was on his way to Karachi for the marriage of a cousin. He was very talkative with bright eyes and a thin handsome face. He was also a very patriotic Indian. He told me that he had been to Pakistan several times and this was his second trip on the diplomacy bus. He said that he “hated Pakistan”. He kept repeating, “Mera Bharat Mahan!” (My India is great!)”. At one point Shehzad began chanting, “Hindustan zindabad, Pakistan murdabad!” (Long Live India, Death to Pakistan!) I told him he had better be quiet, because he would not be welcomed in Pakistan if he said such things, someone might overhear him.
He didn’t seem to care and repeated it several more times, laughing. When we arrived in Lahore I heard him jokingly tell the driver and the other two fellows who had come along on the bus, all employees of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), that the American memsahib had warned him to “chip-chaap, mat kaho” (be quiet, don’t speak). He again repeated the zindabad-murdabad slogan and laughed.
Shehzad genuinely seemed to love India and was quite well informed about Indian politics. He may have been showing off a bit for the Pakistanis and DTC personnel on the bus, but his patriotism and preference for India did not seem superficial or hypocritical. Quite probably, the fighting in Kargil intensified his need to assert his patriotic identity, especially while in route to enemy territory.
A few other India nationals were on the bus that day. An elderly Sikh couple was traveling to the shrine of Guru Nanak. I certainly didn’t speak to everyone, but there were at least two Indian-born Muslim women on the bus who had cross-border marriages and returned to India yearly to visit their parents.
There was one remarkable exchange in the ladies restroom at the border crossing on the Pakistani side. Two other women were waiting for the facilities, one was the elderly Sikh lady, and the other had a dark shawl tucked around her ears in a traditional Islamic style. For some reason, they felt compelled to tell me that they were Indian, not Pakistani, and that India was better than Pakistan. The Sikh lady whispered,“Pakistan bigara desh hai” (spoiled country).
They didn’t, however say anything out loud. Each casually approached me as I waited and shaking their heads and raising their eyebrows to get my attention, whispered comments to me critical of Pakistan, then looking around nervously, motioned for me to remain quiet. I never had another chance to query them, though I did find out that the younger woman was an Indian from Agra who had married a man in Lahore.
Meanwhile, while we had been traveling west across Indian Punjab, Shehzad and I talked about current events in India: The buffoonery of Laloo Prasad Yadav, an infamously corrupt politician in the impoverished state of Bihar. We both agreed it was ironic that an Italian, Sonia Gandhi could be the next Prime Minister. Shehzad was well informed about Indian politics. Interestingly, he told me that when the BJP was in power in Delhi, there were less instances of anti-Muslim violence.
I was surprised that he, as a Muslim, would say such a thing and asked him more questions. He said that the Congress had an agenda and needed to keep Muslims feeling insecure to exploit their votes. But the BJP had a vested interest in keeping the peace in the Muslim community. I asked him why and he explained that the BJP is expected to be anti-Muslim and any problems would automatically be blamed on their communal ideology; so there is greater effort by BJP, as the ruling party, to prevent communal disturbances.
I told him that the prevailing view in the popular media is that the Sangh Parivar made provocative statements against Muslims and incited violence. He repeated that there was less violence in Delhi when BJP was in power. I asked him if it was because Muslims were intimidated and were less likely to make demands from a BJP regime, or perhaps because the law and order situation was better under BJP control. He said it “wasn’t from fear”. He said he hoped that BJP were less corrupt than the other governments.
I asked him which party was better and he said less violence is better and during BJP rule there had been less communal violence. I asked him if he voted for BJP and he said he didn’t vote. Shehzad was a very secular and very nationalist young man. One of his comments I found to be particularly profound. He said that the biggest problem with Muslims in India is that they are under the influence of conservative clerics who often express support for Pakistan.
A couple of weeks later, a cell phone conversation intercepted between General Parvez Musharraf, the Pakistani army chief calling from Beijing and General Aziz back in Pakistan would prove Fernandes’ theory to be seemingly on target. Though many in Pakistan doubted the authenticity of the recordings, others seemed to think that they could have been real. In their conversation, the two generals indicated that Sharif was not calling the shots and was in fact uninformed about the military build-up. This was again, seemingly substantiated by developments after Sharif returned from a whirlwind visit on the fourth of July to consult the US president.
Sharif promised to pull the mujahideen back across the Line of Control in exchange for simply a promise from Clinton that he would take a personal interest in the Kashmir problem. The army responded that Sharif did not have the power to issue such an order. The Indians pointed out the irony of the conflicting claims, that if the infiltrators were not under the control of Pakistan how either Sharif or the Pakistan Army could exert any control? The situation was full of duplicity.
Most of the citizens of Pakistan and all of the newspapers, opined that the midnight mad dash to DC was foolhardy. The Pakistani military declared they would not withdraw. Spokesmen for the “Islamic guerrillas”, as they were called by a BBC correspondent, or jihadis in the liberal Pakistani English press, were indignant that Sharif had the audacity to think he could speak for them. Initially, people were sarcastic about the trip to the US saying that Mrs. Sharif simply wanted to go on a shopping trip in America. Others were incensed and warned Sharif not to return to Pakistan or he would be hung for selling out the brave freedom fighters.
The military, the mujahideen, the Pakistani press all condemned Sharif’s US trip as an unnecessary diplomatic manipulation of a military situation that Pakistan seemed to be winning, and a blatant capitulation to Washington and India. However, within only a few days of Sharif’s return, after meeting with top military officials, the militants began a well-publicized retreat from the heights above Kargil. How much Sharif knew in February, while he was shaking hands with the Indian Prime Minster was not known and hotly disputed.
In fact, from his jail cell, several weeks after he had been deposed by General Musharraf, in October 1999, Nawaz Sharif claimed again that he had been duped by Musharraf who had orchestrated the ill-conceived Kargil plan. General Musharraf, who had become the self-appointed head of state, publicly refuted Sharif’s claim, asserting that the military maneuvers could not be undertaken without the consent of the Prime Minister. I’m reminded of Pakistan’s internal contradictions and claims regarding the responsibility for Operation Gibraltar leading to the 1965 war with India.
Disclaimer: The facts and opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article.
Yvette Rosser
Dr. Yvette Claire Rosser, also known as Ram Rani is an American writer and scholar. She identifies as a Hindu and teaches Hinduism to Westerners. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “Curriculum as Destiny: Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh,” is a study of the politics of history in South Asia. She’s currently working on her next book on the politicization of history textbooks in the subcontinent.
Kargil And The Manufacturing Of History-II
Additional military police met the bus and stood guard while we ate. The Indian government was not taking any chances.
The diplomacy bus was sparkling new as I rode from Delhi to Lahore in June 1999, our high profile vehicle had a military escort all the way from Delhi to the Pakistani border –a shiny new beige Indian Tata Jeep with four soldiers in the back, two of whom were Sikhs, a soldier in the passenger seat and a jawan driver, six military men in all. They had rifles, revolvers, and a red police light flashing on the top of the jeep. Whenever there was a traffic jam or trucks blocking the road, they would turn on the lights and sirens, lean out of their seats, several waving lathis (bamboo poles) high in the air, not threatening, just waving them and yelling for the drivers to move over. Amazingly, on crowded Indian roads, heavy traffic immediately made way for us. We stopped for breakfast and lunch at tourist restaurants, where my young seat-mate, Shehzad, whom I had gladly befriended, and I shared a table. Additional military police met the bus and stood guard while we ate. The Indian government was not taking any chances.
This was definitely a bus that ran on schedule. A clean new Ashok-Leyland bus with the flags of both nations brightly painted on both sides and front and back, Pakistan’s green crescent and India’s tri-colors, with poles crossing, proclaiming our diplomatic mission. In India, as people we passed recognized the ‘diplomacy bus’ moving along the highway, they would smile and wave and point to us, motioning to their friends who would also smile and wave.
Invariably, if boys in a cricket field or someone at a tea stall, bicycle shop, or buying mangoes from a wooden cart on the roadside noticed the passing Delhi-Lahore ‘Diplomacy Bus’, they would smile broadly and wave or put their palms together over their heads in a sign of enthusiastic Namaskar. It was almost as if we were driving down the road with the Prime Minister himself on board. The friendly greetings were everywhere. Many of the passengers waved back.
When the bus arrived at the Wagah border, we all disembarked with our luggage. On the Indian side of the customs check post I placed my bags on a long counter where all the passengers’ bags were opened and checked. The handsome thirty-something gentleman who was the customs officer asked me if I had any “politically sensitive materials.”
When the bus arrived at the Wagah border, we all disembarked with our luggage. On the Indian side of the customs check post I placed my bags on a long counter where all the passengers’ bags were opened and checked. The handsome thirty-something gentleman who was the customs officer asked me if I had any “politically sensitive materials.”
Since I had a duffel bag full of Urdu textbooks he was curious about what was in such a heavy bag. I explained that they were only samajik vigyan pathepushtika (social studies textbooks) and they were published in Pakistan, so they were obviously not politically sensitive. I asked what sorts of published materials were considered “politically sensitive.” The customs officer mumbled something about politically sensitive books and then, while rummaging through my bags, found a copy of Ayisha Jalal’s Sole Spokesman. He lifted it and said, “This looks politically sensitive.” I flipped open the to the title page and pointed out that it was published by OUP, Karachi, “Not to worry, this is also available in Pakistan.”
By then I was most curious. Just what sorts of materials are considered politically sensitive? He was a bit at a loss and repeated that Indian customs officers had been instructed to confiscate any politically sensitive books and newspapers so as not to offend “our Pakistani neighbors.” I asked him if The Times of India was considered politically sensitive. He got a bit excited and said “Yes, yes, The Times of India is not allowed, it is politically sensitive.” He eagerly looked in my duffel bag again asking if I had a copy of The Times of India. I told him I did not, but then I asked him if the New York Times was considered politically sensitive. When he responded in the negative, I said I didn’t think The Times of India was actually politically sensitive either. He laughed and agreed that it wasn’t, in India, but they were instructed, as per the wishes of the Pakistani government, to confiscate Indian newspapers and magazines because they were considered politically sensitive.
I asked him if travelers coming from Pakistan to India had to surrender copies of Pakistani newspapers such as The News or Dawn before proceeding. He said that it didn’t matter to the Indian government; I could bring whatever newspapers I wanted back with me. However, later his assertion turned out to be overly magnanimous. During the next few weeks, as the fighting in Kargil escalated, the Indian government took rather drastic censorship measures and blocked out the Dawn newspaper’s web site so that it could not be accessed from India servers. A year later, in March of 2000, after spending almost two months in Pakistan, I again took the diplomacy bus, this time in the opposite direction from Lahore to Delhi.
A Dutch journalist who had interviewed General Musharraf was returning to India to cover the President Clinton’s visit. Early in the predawn light, at the Faletti Hotel in Lahore, before boarding the bus, the guard checking our baggage confiscated all of her newspapers and magazines saying that the Indian government would not allow them to be taken into the country. I intervened, relating to the guard what the Indian customs officer had told me the previous year. He reluctantly gave half of the magazines back to her. When we arrived at the border an hour later, it turned out that she didn’t have the proper visa to re-enter India and had to return to Lahore. She left behind a couple of magazines on the bus and the very talkative fellows working for the Delhi Transport Corporation and I shared them during our ride to Delhi. Nobody confiscated them at the border.
In June 1999, after the diplomacy bus had only been operative for a few months, with big guns booming in Kashmir, there was considerable journalistic interest in the passengers on the diplomacy bus. On the Indian side of the border, I was interviewed by a Sikh newsman with a television crew. I told him that I had taken the bus from India to Pakistan in order to support the diplomatic efforts, especially in light of the tension at the LOC. It was certainly an interesting time for doing research into how history is utilized in the manufacture of nationalism in India and Pakistan. Now I was experiencing history in the making and wondered how the current crisis would play out in India’s and Pakistan’s juxtaposed historical narratives.
Porters from India put our luggage back on the bus to drive the fifty yards across “no-man’s-land” to the Pakistani side of the border where Pakistani porters removed our luggage to pass through Pakistani customs. Shehzad had to pay a bribe to be able to take his heavy bag of clothing into Pakistan. It had been a quiet under the table affair on the Indian side that no one noticed. But, on the Pakistani side, he became irritated because the size of the bribe was too big. The bribing occurred in full public view right beside the bus, with loud negotiating until they settled on an amount. As his debate with the customs officials grew a bit heated I was worried that my new friend was getting himself into trouble. After about ten minutes that held up our departure, he came from around the back of the bus and told me that they had charged him six thousand rupees bakhshish far too much, he complained. The Indians had only charged him three thousand, a more standard fee for such a bribe.
Crossing that border was like crossing an ideological iron curtain though certainly the landscape on either side was indistinguishable. In just fifty yards the political rhetoric, not to mention historical perspectives, were a hundred and eighty degrees and a million miles apart, however everything else looked virtually, if somewhat superficially, the same.
By then I was most curious. Just what sorts of materials are considered politically sensitive? He was a bit at a loss and repeated that Indian customs officers had been instructed to confiscate any politically sensitive books and newspapers so as not to offend “our Pakistani neighbors.” I asked him if The Times of India was considered politically sensitive. He got a bit excited and said “Yes, yes, The Times of India is not allowed, it is politically sensitive.” He eagerly looked in my duffel bag again asking if I had a copy of The Times of India. I told him I did not, but then I asked him if the New York Times was considered politically sensitive. When he responded in the negative, I said I didn’t think The Times of India was actually politically sensitive either. He laughed and agreed that it wasn’t, in India, but they were instructed, as per the wishes of the Pakistani government, to confiscate Indian newspapers and magazines because they were considered politically sensitive.
I asked him if travelers coming from Pakistan to India had to surrender copies of Pakistani newspapers such as The News or Dawn before proceeding. He said that it didn’t matter to the Indian government; I could bring whatever newspapers I wanted back with me. However, later his assertion turned out to be overly magnanimous. During the next few weeks, as the fighting in Kargil escalated, the Indian government took rather drastic censorship measures and blocked out the Dawn newspaper’s web site so that it could not be accessed from India servers. A year later, in March of 2000, after spending almost two months in Pakistan, I again took the diplomacy bus, this time in the opposite direction from Lahore to Delhi.
A Dutch journalist who had interviewed General Musharraf was returning to India to cover the President Clinton’s visit. Early in the predawn light, at the Faletti Hotel in Lahore, before boarding the bus, the guard checking our baggage confiscated all of her newspapers and magazines saying that the Indian government would not allow them to be taken into the country. I intervened, relating to the guard what the Indian customs officer had told me the previous year. He reluctantly gave half of the magazines back to her. When we arrived at the border an hour later, it turned out that she didn’t have the proper visa to re-enter India and had to return to Lahore. She left behind a couple of magazines on the bus and the very talkative fellows working for the Delhi Transport Corporation and I shared them during our ride to Delhi. Nobody confiscated them at the border.
In June 1999, after the diplomacy bus had only been operative for a few months, with big guns booming in Kashmir, there was considerable journalistic interest in the passengers on the diplomacy bus. On the Indian side of the border, I was interviewed by a Sikh newsman with a television crew. I told him that I had taken the bus from India to Pakistan in order to support the diplomatic efforts, especially in light of the tension at the LOC. It was certainly an interesting time for doing research into how history is utilized in the manufacture of nationalism in India and Pakistan. Now I was experiencing history in the making and wondered how the current crisis would play out in India’s and Pakistan’s juxtaposed historical narratives.
Porters from India put our luggage back on the bus to drive the fifty yards across “no-man’s-land” to the Pakistani side of the border where Pakistani porters removed our luggage to pass through Pakistani customs. Shehzad had to pay a bribe to be able to take his heavy bag of clothing into Pakistan. It had been a quiet under the table affair on the Indian side that no one noticed. But, on the Pakistani side, he became irritated because the size of the bribe was too big. The bribing occurred in full public view right beside the bus, with loud negotiating until they settled on an amount. As his debate with the customs officials grew a bit heated I was worried that my new friend was getting himself into trouble. After about ten minutes that held up our departure, he came from around the back of the bus and told me that they had charged him six thousand rupees bakhshish far too much, he complained. The Indians had only charged him three thousand, a more standard fee for such a bribe.
Crossing that border was like crossing an ideological iron curtain though certainly the landscape on either side was indistinguishable. In just fifty yards the political rhetoric, not to mention historical perspectives, were a hundred and eighty degrees and a million miles apart, however everything else looked virtually, if somewhat superficially, the same.
There are three main visible differences that are easily noticeable when crossing from India to Pakistan. First, the Urdu script is used in Pakistan instead of Hindi or Punjabi—English was also far more common on the Indian side, since India has multiple scripts and a fairly mobile population, English is often the lingua franca.
Secondly, men’s fashion in Pakistan was distinguishable by the added length of their shirts, ankle length pants, and the frequency of beards. And thirdly, the situation regarding women, of whom there are far fewer out and about on the roadside in Pakistan. Those that are in the market will invariably have their heads covered whereas in urban India it is rare. Also, in Pakistan, one never sees a woman on a motorcycle or bicycle, a common sight on Indian roadways.
After we passed through the two checkpoints and proceeded past the Pakistani side of the border crossing, Shehzad told me “aage dekho” (look in front), our escort had changed. He laughed and made a disparaging remark. Instead of a shiny beige military vehicle escorting us, we were being led to Lahore by a dented old Toyota truck, with one soldier in the passenger seat and a man in a gray salwar-kameez driving. On the back of the faded red truck a torn tarp was flapping in the wind. Shehzad whispered, “The Pakistanis don’t care about diplomacy.”
Out my window I watched the reactions of the people on the road. The seemingly hostile responses that people gave when they saw the diplomacy bus were in complete contrast to the friendly reactions of people on the Indian side.
After we passed through the two checkpoints and proceeded past the Pakistani side of the border crossing, Shehzad told me “aage dekho” (look in front), our escort had changed. He laughed and made a disparaging remark. Instead of a shiny beige military vehicle escorting us, we were being led to Lahore by a dented old Toyota truck, with one soldier in the passenger seat and a man in a gray salwar-kameez driving. On the back of the faded red truck a torn tarp was flapping in the wind. Shehzad whispered, “The Pakistanis don’t care about diplomacy.”
Out my window I watched the reactions of the people on the road. The seemingly hostile responses that people gave when they saw the diplomacy bus were in complete contrast to the friendly reactions of people on the Indian side.
While passing between the Indian border and Lahore, which is only 18 kilometers, groups of men sitting under trees on charpoys, or on a bench at a chai stall, or standing at a bicycle repair shop, if they noticed us passing, would frown and motion to their friends, who would turn and also scowl at the bus. To my amazement, this quite negative response was repeated numerous times in just those few miles.
Shehzad noticed too. Without my having said anything, he leaned over and whispered in a low, serious voice, “Yahan ke log, humko buri nazar dete hain.” (People here are giving us the evil eye). It was a bit unnerving and the reverse of the positive reaction our diplomacy bus had elicited on the Indian side.
Shehzad noticed too. Without my having said anything, he leaned over and whispered in a low, serious voice, “Yahan ke log, humko buri nazar dete hain.” (People here are giving us the evil eye). It was a bit unnerving and the reverse of the positive reaction our diplomacy bus had elicited on the Indian side.
I was intently looking out the window, watching the people watching us. Among all the Pakistanis who noticed the bus, only a group of boys playing cricket in a field waved a friendly salute as we passed. That gave me some hope that perhaps a younger generation did not have the level of resentment towards India, which was so obvious in the eyes of the adults who glared in anger at the painting of the flags of India and Pakistan intertwined on the sides of the bus.
When we arrived at the Faletti Hotel in Lahore, Shehzad and I parted ways. I took photos of him standing in front of the bus. He was still chanting “Hindustan zindabad, Pakistan murdabad” as we stood waiting for our ride. I warned him again to keep it down. I hope he made it home safely.
At the Lahore end of the journey there was no security, except for the one or two policemen standing at a distance. Taxis and cars were allowed to drive right up next to the bus. Whereas on the Delhi end, all vehicles were prohibited from entering the Ambedkar terminal parking lot while the diplomacy bus was loading or unloading, not even well-wishers were allowed to see the passengers off or welcome them when they arrived. All vehicles and non-passengers had to stay outside the gates while the diplomacy bus was parked at Ambedkar Station. In Lahore it was far more casual and lax.
There were several journalists at the Faletti Hotel interviewing the arriving passengers. A tall, clean-shaven young man wearing a long, grey salwar-kameez spoke with me as he took some notes on a small spiral bound pad. The reporter was sympathetic to what I had to say about the unfortunate nature of the hostilities in Kargil. He asked me how the Indians were reacting to the latest violence in Kashmir and I told him that they felt betrayed by the Lahore Declaration, which had been made right here at the Faletti Hotel just a few months before.
I couldn’t help but wonder if they had spruced Faletti’s up a bit for the occasion, it didn’t look like it had been fixed up recently. The Faletti was not a spit and polish five-star; in fact, it was rather dull and graying with mildewed whitewashed walls and a garden with just the barest grass and shrubs. The fence along the road at the front was broken in a few places.
At the Lahore end of the journey there was no security, except for the one or two policemen standing at a distance. Taxis and cars were allowed to drive right up next to the bus. Whereas on the Delhi end, all vehicles were prohibited from entering the Ambedkar terminal parking lot while the diplomacy bus was loading or unloading, not even well-wishers were allowed to see the passengers off or welcome them when they arrived. All vehicles and non-passengers had to stay outside the gates while the diplomacy bus was parked at Ambedkar Station. In Lahore it was far more casual and lax.
There were several journalists at the Faletti Hotel interviewing the arriving passengers. A tall, clean-shaven young man wearing a long, grey salwar-kameez spoke with me as he took some notes on a small spiral bound pad. The reporter was sympathetic to what I had to say about the unfortunate nature of the hostilities in Kargil. He asked me how the Indians were reacting to the latest violence in Kashmir and I told him that they felt betrayed by the Lahore Declaration, which had been made right here at the Faletti Hotel just a few months before.
I couldn’t help but wonder if they had spruced Faletti’s up a bit for the occasion, it didn’t look like it had been fixed up recently. The Faletti was not a spit and polish five-star; in fact, it was rather dull and graying with mildewed whitewashed walls and a garden with just the barest grass and shrubs. The fence along the road at the front was broken in a few places.
Nothing about the place indicated that it was a proper venue for Prime Ministers to hold a ceremony of such international importance. When I mentioned this, the reporter reminded me that representatives from the Pakistani military establishment had not attended the ceremony in February to commemorate the inaugural voyage of the ‘diplomacy bus’, in fact, they had boycotted it. He explained something I already knew all too well, that no political or diplomatic initiatives in Pakistan have any chance unless they have the stamp of approval of the military.
Bowling for Kashmir
During June 1999, besides Kargil, there was another competition going on between India and Pakistan in the world of cricket, whose fans in the Subcontinent are very passionate about the game. Cricket was long ago politicized in the Subcontinent. This year during the World Cup tournament in England, early in the competition, India beat Pakistan, which was the favored team. It was a huge upset for the Pakistanis and a surprise victory for India.
I was in Delhi when that game was going on and everywhere people were glued to their television sets. After the last ball was bowled, and India had bested Pakistan, spontaneous firecrackers could be heard across the city. Ultimately, India was disqualified from the finals and Pakistan went on to play Australia for the title. On the night of the championship, I sat on the king size bed in my friend’s Lahore home, the air conditioner keeping us cool, and watched the game. We laughed and laughed, joking about the political overtones of sports matches.
As the Pakistanis began by playing poorly, I surmised that Indians across the border were probably praying for Australia. My friend commented that, “there are undoubtedly thousands of Mullahs on this side of the border, praying to Allah that Pakistan wins”. I responded that I could imagine thousands of Hindus in India, who are right now praying to Lord Shiva to grant just the opposite boon, to defeat the Pakistanis and bring victory to the Australians. I joked that they might create a new modified Sanskrit prayer something like, “Australiaya Namaha” or “Akhand Ananda Australium”. We laughed and had to explain why it was so funny to another friend who was also watching the cricket match. I treasured such a warm light moment in a country that was otherwise focused on news from the front, and the on-going hate India propaganda campaign that is the lifeblood of the Pakistani media.
While in Lahore, I met Imran Ali, a history professor at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Science), whom I had met the year before at a seminar sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After we had chatted for a few minutes, I told him about the “buri nazar” episode on the bus. He said something that I found rather shocking, but in reality is all too typical: “And why shouldn’t they give dirty looks to that bus. We don’t want those Hindus coming on our soil. We don’t need them and don’t want them, and hate their bus.
They should stay in India.” I was so taken aback by his negative reply I forgot to mention that most of the passengers on the bus were Pakistanis returning home from visiting family in India.
Bowling for Kashmir
During June 1999, besides Kargil, there was another competition going on between India and Pakistan in the world of cricket, whose fans in the Subcontinent are very passionate about the game. Cricket was long ago politicized in the Subcontinent. This year during the World Cup tournament in England, early in the competition, India beat Pakistan, which was the favored team. It was a huge upset for the Pakistanis and a surprise victory for India.
I was in Delhi when that game was going on and everywhere people were glued to their television sets. After the last ball was bowled, and India had bested Pakistan, spontaneous firecrackers could be heard across the city. Ultimately, India was disqualified from the finals and Pakistan went on to play Australia for the title. On the night of the championship, I sat on the king size bed in my friend’s Lahore home, the air conditioner keeping us cool, and watched the game. We laughed and laughed, joking about the political overtones of sports matches.
As the Pakistanis began by playing poorly, I surmised that Indians across the border were probably praying for Australia. My friend commented that, “there are undoubtedly thousands of Mullahs on this side of the border, praying to Allah that Pakistan wins”. I responded that I could imagine thousands of Hindus in India, who are right now praying to Lord Shiva to grant just the opposite boon, to defeat the Pakistanis and bring victory to the Australians. I joked that they might create a new modified Sanskrit prayer something like, “Australiaya Namaha” or “Akhand Ananda Australium”. We laughed and had to explain why it was so funny to another friend who was also watching the cricket match. I treasured such a warm light moment in a country that was otherwise focused on news from the front, and the on-going hate India propaganda campaign that is the lifeblood of the Pakistani media.
While in Lahore, I met Imran Ali, a history professor at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Science), whom I had met the year before at a seminar sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After we had chatted for a few minutes, I told him about the “buri nazar” episode on the bus. He said something that I found rather shocking, but in reality is all too typical: “And why shouldn’t they give dirty looks to that bus. We don’t want those Hindus coming on our soil. We don’t need them and don’t want them, and hate their bus.
They should stay in India.” I was so taken aback by his negative reply I forgot to mention that most of the passengers on the bus were Pakistanis returning home from visiting family in India.
As far as I could tell, there were absolutely no Hindus on board and only I, a young woman from Canada, and the elderly Sikh couple were the Non-Muslims. The bus was a mechanical object and could profess no religious affiliation, both flags were painted on the bus; where were the invading Hindus? Amazingly, the SSRC had brought Imran Ali to the seminar in New Mexico as a history professor who represented a modern, more forward thinking element of Pakistan, which made his comments all the more shocking.
Professor Imran Ali told me that Kashmir was Pakistan’s only issue. Parroting Z.A. Bhutto, he said that Pakistanis should be willing to fight “hazaron sal ki larai” (a thousand years of war) to free Kashmir. I pointed out that in a thousand years, it was very doubtful if either Pakistan or India, as we know them, would still exist, much less the USA. I asked if he thought Kashmir was more important than other immediate concerns such as education, democracy and economic infrastructure. He said these were all secondary to getting Kashmir away from India. “Kashmir is Pakistan’s only issue. Even if we have to suffer, we will fight and sacrifice until Kashmir is free.”
Imran Ali actually didn’t seem to be suffering too badly. His newly constructed home in one of Lahore’s most posh neighborhoods has large slabs of pure white marble covering the floors and fabulous carved wooden and stone furniture. European lithographs from the mid-1800’s depicting scantily clad fisher women on the Cormandal coast hung on his walls in gilded golden frames. A swimming pool outside the glass windows and a wet bar with mirrors and brass added to the opulence.
In our conversation he went into a long digression regarding India as a nation. He said India was “not a real country, not a real nation”. I pointed out that nationalism, and nation-states as political units as we now know them, are a relatively new phenomenon, a political construct emerging after the American and French Revolutions.
Professor Imran Ali told me that Kashmir was Pakistan’s only issue. Parroting Z.A. Bhutto, he said that Pakistanis should be willing to fight “hazaron sal ki larai” (a thousand years of war) to free Kashmir. I pointed out that in a thousand years, it was very doubtful if either Pakistan or India, as we know them, would still exist, much less the USA. I asked if he thought Kashmir was more important than other immediate concerns such as education, democracy and economic infrastructure. He said these were all secondary to getting Kashmir away from India. “Kashmir is Pakistan’s only issue. Even if we have to suffer, we will fight and sacrifice until Kashmir is free.”
Imran Ali actually didn’t seem to be suffering too badly. His newly constructed home in one of Lahore’s most posh neighborhoods has large slabs of pure white marble covering the floors and fabulous carved wooden and stone furniture. European lithographs from the mid-1800’s depicting scantily clad fisher women on the Cormandal coast hung on his walls in gilded golden frames. A swimming pool outside the glass windows and a wet bar with mirrors and brass added to the opulence.
In our conversation he went into a long digression regarding India as a nation. He said India was “not a real country, not a real nation”. I pointed out that nationalism, and nation-states as political units as we now know them, are a relatively new phenomenon, a political construct emerging after the American and French Revolutions.
Imran Ali was undaunted by my caveat and continued to criticize India saying that it was a hodge-podge excuse for a nation. I asked, in that case, whether Pakistan was also not a nation, pieced together with Balouchi, Sindhi, Punjabi, and other sub-national ethnic groups.
He grew defensive, and declared that, “Pakistan has an ideology and a cohesiveness among the people unlike India where the minorities are restless and don’t want to be part of the union.” I asked about the situation in the Sindh, where the Governor’s rule had been enacted the previous October and the democratically elected legislature dismissed. He seemed irritated by my questions.
He grew defensive, and declared that, “Pakistan has an ideology and a cohesiveness among the people unlike India where the minorities are restless and don’t want to be part of the union.” I asked about the situation in the Sindh, where the Governor’s rule had been enacted the previous October and the democratically elected legislature dismissed. He seemed irritated by my questions.
The war inspired anti-Indian rhetoric was pretty thick during the summer of 1999. I couldn’t help but wonder how much ideological affinity a Mullah would have felt in the home of Professor Imran Ali, with paintings of half-naked women adorning the walls next to the wet bar.
Kargil and the Manufacturing of History –III
Pakistan Studies textbooks are an active site for negatively representing India and othering the Subcontinent’s Hindu past.
In Pakistan in 1999, the “war-like” conflict in Kargil was a powerfully relevant ‘real-time’ example of my scholarly research, as I was interviewing Pakistani scholars, historians and government officials, concerning my PhD dissertation research- an investigation of political pressures on the writing of history textbooks.
Traveling on the Diplomacy Bus during the ‘war’ in Kargil brought the issue of official governmental disinformation found in textbooks and the media into sharp focus. In the newspapers, the government repeatedly claimed that the mujahideen were not physically supported by Pakistan; that Kargil was occupied by indigenous Kashmiri freedom fighters, not Pakistanis or Afghanis or Arabs.
However, the presence of satellite television, the Internet, and newspapers, which are now more connected to international media sources, prevented the usual government propaganda mechanisms from keeping all the facts from all the people.
No one in Pakistan really believed that the army was not involved. A quick read of any newspaper easily revealed the contradictory stance– in one column an official spokesman had stated categorically that the Pakistani Army was not involved in Kargil, whereas an article on the facing page had announced a general’s promotion describing him as “a hero of the war in Kargil”. Many Pakistanis were indeed troubled by such contradictions.
There was at least one short-lived positive impact of the Kargil crisis, where hundreds of young men lost their lives. In the aftermath, there was a dramatic outpouring of newspaper and magazine articles attempting to analyze the brinkmanship from various angles. This critical reflexivity at the popular level is a positive development, though some of the essays in Pakistani newspapers called for the military to take over the government in the wake of “Nawaz Shariff’s sell out to the imperialist Clinton”, soon after which, General Musharraf obliged. However, post Kargil, most of the discussions, at least in the English press, were more circumspect.
Many writers looked at the Kargil debacle through a lens of history, trying to understand the cause of Pakistan’s repeated military failures. Some of the observations made during and after the Kargil crisis, such as the “complete inadequacy of Pakistan’s international diplomacy”, are also cited in Pakistan Studies textbooks regarding India’s perceived manipulation of world opinion during the 71 war and Pakistan’s inability to counter it.
When the textbooks and the clerics cry conspiracy and the majority of the newspapers, particularly the Urdu press, misinform the people, the tendency for Pakistanis to feel betrayed and persecuted, victims of international “Paki-bashing” is not surprising. During the Bangladesh War, the newspapers in Pakistan told nothing of the violent military crackdown in Dhaka in March 1971, nor did they keep the people informed of the deteriorating strategic situation.
The role of the Mukti Bahini [1] was practically unknown, and when defeat finally came, it was a devastating and unexpected shock that could only be explained by Indira Gandhi’s lies and treachery. Her comment that she had “sunk the Two-Nation Theory in the Bay of Bengal” is quoted in Pakistani textbooks.
This nationalized attitude of denial and historical negationism also colored General Musharraf’s response to the leaking of the classified Hamoodur Rahman report, a study of the mistakes made by the Pakistani military in erstwhile East Pakistan.
Hamood-ur Rahman, a Bengali who opted to stay in Pakistan, led the commission. The report was never officially released and due to its criticism of the Pakistani military establishment, all known copies were immediately withdrawn and it was locked away until August 14, 2000, Pakistan Independence Day, when parts of the report were somehow leaked to the Times of India.
The publication of excerpts from the long suppressed Hamoodur Rahman Report caused a furor in Bangladesh since it mentioned generals by name and alluded to not only military incompetence, but rape and other crimes against civilians that the conquering Indian army chose not prosecute [2]. Pakistanis, on the other hand, across the board, ignored the 30 year old report.
At a news conference in New York, on September 12, 1999, during the Millennium Summit at the UN, General Musharraf was asked about declassifying the Hamoodur Rahman Report and whether there would be trials as recommended. Musharraf replied, “Let’s forget the bitterness of the past and move forward [. . . .] Something happened 30 years ago. Why do we want to live in history? As a Pakistani, I would like to forget 1971.”
Historical Pakistani negationsim was also apparent during the expulsion of a Pakistani diplomat from Bangladesh in December 2000 for remarks he made at a seminar in Dhaka blaming the violence in 1971 on Bengalis and denying that genocide had been perpetrated by the Pakistani Army.
His comments triggered angry street protests. Yet, in its official statement the Government of Pakistan did not mention why he was withdrawn, much less apologize. These confrontations bolstered the Awami League’s campaign during the 2001 elections in Bangladesh.
The Pakistan government has always opposed the Awami League, the party that led to the breakup of the country. The Pakistani government regularly gives money to the election campaign of the opposition, the BNP (Bangladesh National Party).
Most Pakistanis still consider the creation of Bangladesh to have been a great loss, which it undoubtedly was, to the morale and economy of the western half of the country.
The split up of Pakistan is attributed to Hindu conspiracies. In Pakistani textbooks, there is little mention of East Pakistan, much less Bangladesh. When it is mentioned, the religious devotion of the Bengalis is brought into question, not the negative impact of overly centralizing government decrees and a decade of military rule and twenty-four years of unequal economic investment, and especially the imposition of Urdu, a totally foreign language with a different script as the “official language” of East Pakistan. The language riots in the early fifties were what eventually led to the civil war, twenty years later.
Pakistan’s denial of responsibility allows Islamabad to continue deriding the needs of the provinces. A lack of historical reflectiveness is one reason that the central government and its agencies, and the all-pervasive Pakistani military, could easily dismiss bilateral declarations in Lahore and risk repeated military adventurism into both politics and geography. Alas, this malaise of blinkered nationalism that governments do not learn from history, is not limited to Pakistan.
At the height of the Kargil crisis, newspapers ran stories, which referred to the occupation of Kargil as “Pakistan’s revenge for 1971”. There has historically been a lack of information available to the citizens of Pakistan about the 65 War, when on September 6 Indian troops invaded Pakistani territory.
There is even less documentation regarding the Bangladesh War of Independence, when 90 thousand Pakistani troops surrendered to the Indian army after only an eleven day offensive.
Yet the civil war that resulted in the split-up of the nation remains Pakistan’s most potent symbol of loss and shame, evidenced by a headline that ran in June, 1999 in The News, critical of the government’s domestic policies, “Nawaz Shariff’s Policies are Turning Sindh into Another Bangladesh.” Several newspapers called “Kargil revenge for 1971”.
Both the breakup of the nation in 1971 and India’s surprise attack on Lahore in 1965 are inadequately explained in popular discourse and in the official historical narrative. Wars in Pakistani parlance hang out of context in history—censored and edited from cumbersome associations with cause and effect.
This is particularly true of PTV news, which few in Pakistan actually take seriously. Unfortunately, the BBC, which many people watch and trust, is also slanted, but with more sophisticated assumptions of neutrality, therefore perhaps more insidious. For those without satellite dishes, the BBC is prerecorded and played each morning on a loop on the Stn network, so that the censors can pre-edit any undesirable segments of the broadcast.
On the morning of February 10, 2000, for example, I was watching the BBC broadcast on Stn at a friend’s flat in Karachi. A clip momentarily featuring the popular Indian film actor, Shah Rukh Khan, dancing and singing on top of a train, cut to a special report on A.H. Rahman and his artistic collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber. After about thirty seconds into the broadcast, suddenly the picture of A. H. Rahman was digitally distorted and some pop music began playing as the picture cut to landscape scenes. The second time that broadcast came around on the prerecorded loop, it was cut within seconds, digitalizing Shah Rukh Khan on the top of the train, substituted by those same scenes of Pakistani countryside and pop muzak. By the second viewing the censors were ready for the insidious reports about Indians beamed by the BBC to the general South Asian region.
I saw this type of meaningless censorship at work again in late April 2000, when the BBC ran a special report, also broadcast on the Stn loop, about Salman Rushdie’s return visit to India after a gap of twelve years. Less than a minute into the segment it was cut and once again, those scenes of Pakistani landscape accompanied by that annoying pop music replaced the programming. After about three minutes the BBC reporter suddenly reappeared, saying “and that’s the end of today’s broadcast.”
Obviously the Stn and PTV censors fear the destabilization of Pakistani culture via the airwaves, especially when the program covers events in India–even when it is just a report from Bollywood. Most Pakistanis roll their eyes and shake their heads while watching BBC as a dancing Shah Rukh Khan comes into focus, and is suddenly digitalized. They were saved once again by their government’s watchful censors from India’s corrupting influence.
Writing history in the context of the fighting in Kargil, brings to mind an episode from the book by Akbar S. Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: the Search for Saladin (Oxford University Press: 1997), in which he tells of a personal conversation with General Niazi, the General in charge of the Pakistani Army in Dhaka in 1971.
According to Ahmed, Niazi claimed that he was planning to “cross into India and march up the Ganges and capture Delhi and thus link up with Pakistan.” Nazi added, “This will be the corridor that will link East with West Pakistan. It was a corridor that the Quaid-e-Azam demanded and I will obtain it by force of arms.”
This farfetched reasoning could still be seen among those who were battling the Indian army in Kargil. In a June newspaper article published in The News, a commander of the Pakistani based muhajideen told the reporter that their plan was first to take “Kargil, then Srinagar, then march victorious into Delhi.”
My visit to Pakistan during the summer of 1999 was not only eventful, but also a living lesson in selective historical reasoning. Even as late as December 26, 2000, one of the more liberal of the Pakistani publishing houses, DAWN, wrote concerning the Indian ceasefire in Kashmir and the terrorist bombing attack on the Red Fort in Delhi, that though ”Guns have fallen silent in Siachen, the world’s highest battlefield, after 16 years of relentless firing between Indian and Pakistani troops, [. . .] Mujahideen groups, still deeply suspicious of New Delhi’s peace initiatives, have stepped up their armed campaign –stretching from the heart of the Indian capital to the heart of the matter, in Kashmir (emphasis mine).”
This article in DAWN, quotes George Fernandes as saying that “attacks by the Mujahideen on the Indian forces continue to be a major stumbling block in the thawing of relations between India and Pakistan, ‘since both the outfits, Harkat-ul-Ansar and Lashkar-i-Taiba, operate from Pakistani soil’.”
Dawn counters this Indian assertion of Pakistani complicity with a quote from Syed Ali Shah Gilani, a senior leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), who said in response to Fernandes’ statement concerning a foreign hand in Kashmir, “There are claims by the media and the government that people in Kashmir are tired of fighting – that they want peace. These attacks serve to remind all concerned that Kashmiris have little or no interest in the peace of the grave. There is no constituency for a cease-fire in Kashmir.
There is a struggle on for a just solution.” Gilani continued, “If there are people who have come here from elsewhere to wipe the tears of the suffering people of Kashmir, and they fight for us, we welcome them.”Dawn mentioned that six Indian soldiers, three civilians and “a freedom fighter were among those killed.”
According to the Pakistani interpretation, the Kashmiris do not want peace and they welcome foreign mercenaries. Naturally from this perspective, all mujahideen are freedom-fighters, not as New Delhi has labeled them, infiltrators and terrorists. Their former American benefactors have also reclassified them, changing their moniker 180 degrees, from mujahideen–freedom fighters against communist aggression–to nasty Muslim fanatics and terrorists.
When current events are subject to the vagaries of multiple interpretations, there is little wonder how their reinterpretation for use in historical narratives is also a process of modification and adaptation of events to fit the predetermined mold of Pakistani or Indian or American historiography.
India and America have large minority populations whose histories and perspectives, and in the case of India’s minorities, their ‘feelings’ must be considered in the writing of the nation’s history. Although the manipulation of history is more obvious in Pakistani textbooks than is the norm in non-communist or democratic nations, it must be said that all countries color their past to suit the needs of their present.
In Islamabad and Lahore, during the summer of 1999, I interviewed several well-known scholars, representing various schools of thought. I sought them out to ask controversial questions, so that I could frame my critique of the textbooks in the context of comments made by Pakistanis themselves.
A simple survey of the textbooks could tell how the government constructed Pakistani history. Comparing different editions through the decades could indicate, when the government decided to change the historical narrative to suit a particular dispensation. However, looking only at textbooks from the Textbook Boards and curriculum guides published by the Ministry of Education leaves out dissident, alternative perspectives and privileges the national paradigm, without considering how intellectuals and historians representing different orientations view the official version of history.
Hence, in my efforts to interview historians and Pakistani intellectuals from the provinces, interested in social sciences, I traveled to Sindh, Baluchistan, and NWFP for four months in 2000 and returned again in April 2001 for several months, conducting research for my PhD dissertation, “Curriculum as Destiny: Comparing Secondary Social Studies Textbooks in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh”.
The last time I was in Pakistani was in December 2004, to participate in a conference on Pakistani textbooks, sponsored by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and organized by my colleagues and mentors, A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim, authors of the groundbreaking investigation: ‘The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan”. I hope to go back to Pakistan one day soon to meet my friends and colleagues in Lahore and Islamabad and Sindh.
Revisions in the textbooks were “strongly encouraged” by the international community after 9/11, compelling the Pakistani government to tone down the jihadi rhetoric used in the textbooks.
My dear friend Afrisiab Khattak, originally from Peshawar, but now living in Islamabad due to terrorist threats, wrote in an email in reply to my query about any post 9/11 changes in the textbooks, “as far as I know the content is pretty much the same. Our provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (2008-13) made some effort for reform, but it was undone by the provincial government of Jamat-e-Islami and PTI.”
A.H. Nayyar recently informed me that the 2006 changes had been minimal, stressing there were very few beneficial results. His 2013 report Continuing Flaws in the New Curriculum and Textbooks After Reform, was a “study conducted for the Jinnah Institute, Islamabad”, but it still remains unpublished. Though, additional curriculum changes were supposedly made in 2013, the main theme or essential message of Pakistani textbooks continues to be anti-Indianness.
Nayyar wrote that one of the major problems with the textbooks is that they base Pakistan’s raison d’etre“on the religious identity, little realizing that defining a nation on the basis of one religious identity can cause alienation among Pakistanis of other faiths, thus negating the nation building process. It also entails hate-filled narration, distortion of history, lies, etc.” Nayyar cites the problem with the textbooks published under the new curriculum guides is that they still teach Islamic theology as part of the regular curriculum.
Islamization is embedded in all textbooks of all subject areas. Nayyar points out that this is actually against the constitution of Pakistan, as it forces non-Muslims to learn about Islam in their social studies and language classes. He wrote, “The foremost problem with the textbooks is that they clearly violate the Constitution of the country by forcibly teaching Islamic studies to non-Muslim students.”
However, in my experience, while speaking to educationalists and those on textbook boards associated with the government of Pakistan, the psychology of the minority students is not considered.
It is often said that those minorities, who only make up less than 2% of the population, could benefit from learning Islamic principles. On the other hand, Nayyar’s 2013 report writes that the textbooks still “have this problem again because the national Curriculum 2006 requires narration of history of the foundation of Pakistan in a way that forces textbook writers to end up with negative contents.” Narrating the history of Pakistan exclusively through the lens of the Two-Nation Theory inherently calls for the vilification of the Hindu-other.
Nayyar further wrote, “The problems with the curriculum and textbooks are a continuation of the past practices that were widely criticized, and were held responsible for the growth of narrow-mindedness and extremism among the youth in the society.” The social studies textbooks analyzed for my study at the turn of the millennia [3] have not changed substantially since the 1980’s and are still in use in most schools.
They are decidedly anti-democratic and inclined to dogmatic tirades and characterized by internal contradictions. The social studies curriculum in Pakistan, as both product and propagator of the “Ideology of Pakistan,” derives its legitimacy from a narrow set of directives.
The Pakistani Studies textbooks authored during the eleven years of General Zia-ul-Haq’s military are filled with contradictions. Particularly enshrined in the narratives is a heavy dose of anti-Indianism with a guiding dictate of quasi-hysterical Hinduphobia.
In the minds of generations of Pakistanis, indoctrinated by the “Ideology of Pakistan” are lodged fragments of hatred and suspicion. The story manufactured to further Zia’s worldview is presented through a myopic lens of hyper-nationalism and the politicized use of Islam.
According to Dr. Magsi, a Sindhi psychiatrist, “[When Civics classes teach negative values] the result is a xenophobic and paranoid acceptance of authoritarianism and the denial of cultural differences and regional ethnic identities.”
In the past decades, social studies textbooks in Pakistan have been used as locations to articulate the hatred that Pakistani policy makers have attempted to inculcate towards their Hindu neighbors.
Vituperative animosities legitimize military and autocratic rule, nurturing a siege mentality. Pakistan Studies textbooks are an active site for negatively representing India and othering the Subcontinent’s Hindu past. Findings from my investigations into the social studies textbooks used in Pakistan show that anti-Indiaism remains at the very core of the narrative. See this quote from the Pakistani journalist, Najum Mushtaq,
“If it is not anti-Indianism, then in what other terms could we possibly render Pakistani-Muslim nationalism? [….] The ‘ideology of Pakistan’ as defined to students at every school and college in the country is nothing except anti-Indianism.
In every walk of life in Pakistan–from academia to journalism, from sports to bureaucracy–a vast majority of people have been inculcated with fantastic anti-India notions. [….] Phrases like the “Hindu mentality” and “devious Indian psyche” are part of the daily military talk. [….] Anti-Indianism, in short, runs deep in Pakistani state and society. It is a state of mind that cannot be switched off […]. People have no other alternative frame of reference in which to define Pakistani nationalism.” [4]
When discussing General Zia’a lasting influence on the teaching of social studies in Pakistan, a principal at a woman’s college in Lahore told me a joke, which she said was well known among intellectuals in the country, “General Zia– May He Rest in Pieces.” Indeed, after his airplane exploded in the sky, the pieces of his body were never found, along with the American ambassador and several other top brass generals on board the fatal flight.
The casket in Zia’s mausoleum near the beautiful Faizl Mosque built with Saudi money in Islamabad, purportedly contains only his false teeth, jawbone, and eyeglasses. The remaining weight of his coffin is compensated with sandbags.
There are, however, bits and pieces of Zia-ul Haq’s body-politic littered across the Pakistani psychological, educational, political, and military landscape. Twenty-eight years after he was blown from the sky, those standardized hate-the-Hindu textbook narratives have been weaponized, pointing in an eastwardly direction.
Footnotes:
Bengali for “Freedom Army”
Note: In mid May 2016, the Bangladeshi government, under Sheik Hassina and the Awami League finally hung one of the Jamat-e-Islami razakars who worked with the Pakistani Army to kill Bengalis in 1971. He was convicted of murder and hung 45 years after the crime. The razakars were not prosecuted under Khalida Zia’s administrations, because they were often part of her coalition government.
“Islamization of Pakistani Social Studies Textbooks” RUPA, New Delhi, 2003.
“Ideological Crossroads”, The New International: June 10, 2001, <http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/jun2001-daily/10-06-2001/oped/o3.htm>)
Kargil and the Manufacturing of History –III
Pakistan Studies textbooks are an active site for negatively representing India and othering the Subcontinent’s Hindu past.
In Pakistan in 1999, the “war-like” conflict in Kargil was a powerfully relevant ‘real-time’ example of my scholarly research, as I was interviewing Pakistani scholars, historians and government officials, concerning my PhD dissertation research- an investigation of political pressures on the writing of history textbooks.
However, the presence of satellite television, the Internet, and newspapers, which are now more connected to international media sources, prevented the usual government propaganda mechanisms from keeping all the facts from all the people.
There was at least one short-lived positive impact of the Kargil crisis, where hundreds of young men lost their lives. In the aftermath, there was a dramatic outpouring of newspaper and magazine articles attempting to analyze the brinkmanship from various angles. This critical reflexivity at the popular level is a positive development, though some of the essays in Pakistani newspapers called for the military to take over the government in the wake of “Nawaz Shariff’s sell out to the imperialist Clinton”, soon after which, General Musharraf obliged. However, post Kargil, most of the discussions, at least in the English press, were more circumspect.
Many writers looked at the Kargil debacle through a lens of history, trying to understand the cause of Pakistan’s repeated military failures. Some of the observations made during and after the Kargil crisis, such as the “complete inadequacy of Pakistan’s international diplomacy”, are also cited in Pakistan Studies textbooks regarding India’s perceived manipulation of world opinion during the 71 war and Pakistan’s inability to counter it.
The role of the Mukti Bahini [1] was practically unknown, and when defeat finally came, it was a devastating and unexpected shock that could only be explained by Indira Gandhi’s lies and treachery. Her comment that she had “sunk the Two-Nation Theory in the Bay of Bengal” is quoted in Pakistani textbooks.
This nationalized attitude of denial and historical negationism also colored General Musharraf’s response to the leaking of the classified Hamoodur Rahman report, a study of the mistakes made by the Pakistani military in erstwhile East Pakistan.
At a news conference in New York, on September 12, 1999, during the Millennium Summit at the UN, General Musharraf was asked about declassifying the Hamoodur Rahman Report and whether there would be trials as recommended. Musharraf replied, “Let’s forget the bitterness of the past and move forward [. . . .] Something happened 30 years ago. Why do we want to live in history? As a Pakistani, I would like to forget 1971.”
Historical Pakistani negationsim was also apparent during the expulsion of a Pakistani diplomat from Bangladesh in December 2000 for remarks he made at a seminar in Dhaka blaming the violence in 1971 on Bengalis and denying that genocide had been perpetrated by the Pakistani Army.
Most Pakistanis still consider the creation of Bangladesh to have been a great loss, which it undoubtedly was, to the morale and economy of the western half of the country.
Pakistan’s denial of responsibility allows Islamabad to continue deriding the needs of the provinces. A lack of historical reflectiveness is one reason that the central government and its agencies, and the all-pervasive Pakistani military, could easily dismiss bilateral declarations in Lahore and risk repeated military adventurism into both politics and geography. Alas, this malaise of blinkered nationalism that governments do not learn from history, is not limited to Pakistan.
At the height of the Kargil crisis, newspapers ran stories, which referred to the occupation of Kargil as “Pakistan’s revenge for 1971”. There has historically been a lack of information available to the citizens of Pakistan about the 65 War, when on September 6 Indian troops invaded Pakistani territory.
This is particularly true of PTV news, which few in Pakistan actually take seriously. Unfortunately, the BBC, which many people watch and trust, is also slanted, but with more sophisticated assumptions of neutrality, therefore perhaps more insidious. For those without satellite dishes, the BBC is prerecorded and played each morning on a loop on the Stn network, so that the censors can pre-edit any undesirable segments of the broadcast.
On the morning of February 10, 2000, for example, I was watching the BBC broadcast on Stn at a friend’s flat in Karachi. A clip momentarily featuring the popular Indian film actor, Shah Rukh Khan, dancing and singing on top of a train, cut to a special report on A.H. Rahman and his artistic collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber. After about thirty seconds into the broadcast, suddenly the picture of A. H. Rahman was digitally distorted and some pop music began playing as the picture cut to landscape scenes. The second time that broadcast came around on the prerecorded loop, it was cut within seconds, digitalizing Shah Rukh Khan on the top of the train, substituted by those same scenes of Pakistani countryside and pop muzak. By the second viewing the censors were ready for the insidious reports about Indians beamed by the BBC to the general South Asian region.
I saw this type of meaningless censorship at work again in late April 2000, when the BBC ran a special report, also broadcast on the Stn loop, about Salman Rushdie’s return visit to India after a gap of twelve years. Less than a minute into the segment it was cut and once again, those scenes of Pakistani landscape accompanied by that annoying pop music replaced the programming. After about three minutes the BBC reporter suddenly reappeared, saying “and that’s the end of today’s broadcast.”
Writing history in the context of the fighting in Kargil, brings to mind an episode from the book by Akbar S. Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: the Search for Saladin (Oxford University Press: 1997), in which he tells of a personal conversation with General Niazi, the General in charge of the Pakistani Army in Dhaka in 1971.
My visit to Pakistan during the summer of 1999 was not only eventful, but also a living lesson in selective historical reasoning. Even as late as December 26, 2000, one of the more liberal of the Pakistani publishing houses, DAWN, wrote concerning the Indian ceasefire in Kashmir and the terrorist bombing attack on the Red Fort in Delhi, that though ”Guns have fallen silent in Siachen, the world’s highest battlefield, after 16 years of relentless firing between Indian and Pakistani troops, [. . .] Mujahideen groups, still deeply suspicious of New Delhi’s peace initiatives, have stepped up their armed campaign –stretching from the heart of the Indian capital to the heart of the matter, in Kashmir (emphasis mine).”
This article in DAWN, quotes George Fernandes as saying that “attacks by the Mujahideen on the Indian forces continue to be a major stumbling block in the thawing of relations between India and Pakistan, ‘since both the outfits, Harkat-ul-Ansar and Lashkar-i-Taiba, operate from Pakistani soil’.”
Dawn counters this Indian assertion of Pakistani complicity with a quote from Syed Ali Shah Gilani, a senior leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), who said in response to Fernandes’ statement concerning a foreign hand in Kashmir, “There are claims by the media and the government that people in Kashmir are tired of fighting – that they want peace. These attacks serve to remind all concerned that Kashmiris have little or no interest in the peace of the grave. There is no constituency for a cease-fire in Kashmir.
There is a struggle on for a just solution.” Gilani continued, “If there are people who have come here from elsewhere to wipe the tears of the suffering people of Kashmir, and they fight for us, we welcome them.”Dawn mentioned that six Indian soldiers, three civilians and “a freedom fighter were among those killed.”
According to the Pakistani interpretation, the Kashmiris do not want peace and they welcome foreign mercenaries. Naturally from this perspective, all mujahideen are freedom-fighters, not as New Delhi has labeled them, infiltrators and terrorists. Their former American benefactors have also reclassified them, changing their moniker 180 degrees, from mujahideen–freedom fighters against communist aggression–to nasty Muslim fanatics and terrorists.
When current events are subject to the vagaries of multiple interpretations, there is little wonder how their reinterpretation for use in historical narratives is also a process of modification and adaptation of events to fit the predetermined mold of Pakistani or Indian or American historiography.
In Islamabad and Lahore, during the summer of 1999, I interviewed several well-known scholars, representing various schools of thought. I sought them out to ask controversial questions, so that I could frame my critique of the textbooks in the context of comments made by Pakistanis themselves.
Hence, in my efforts to interview historians and Pakistani intellectuals from the provinces, interested in social sciences, I traveled to Sindh, Baluchistan, and NWFP for four months in 2000 and returned again in April 2001 for several months, conducting research for my PhD dissertation, “Curriculum as Destiny: Comparing Secondary Social Studies Textbooks in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh”.
The last time I was in Pakistani was in December 2004, to participate in a conference on Pakistani textbooks, sponsored by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and organized by my colleagues and mentors, A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim, authors of the groundbreaking investigation: ‘The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan”. I hope to go back to Pakistan one day soon to meet my friends and colleagues in Lahore and Islamabad and Sindh.
Revisions in the textbooks were “strongly encouraged” by the international community after 9/11, compelling the Pakistani government to tone down the jihadi rhetoric used in the textbooks.
A.H. Nayyar recently informed me that the 2006 changes had been minimal, stressing there were very few beneficial results. His 2013 report Continuing Flaws in the New Curriculum and Textbooks After Reform, was a “study conducted for the Jinnah Institute, Islamabad”, but it still remains unpublished. Though, additional curriculum changes were supposedly made in 2013, the main theme or essential message of Pakistani textbooks continues to be anti-Indianness.
Nayyar wrote that one of the major problems with the textbooks is that they base Pakistan’s raison d’etre“on the religious identity, little realizing that defining a nation on the basis of one religious identity can cause alienation among Pakistanis of other faiths, thus negating the nation building process. It also entails hate-filled narration, distortion of history, lies, etc.” Nayyar cites the problem with the textbooks published under the new curriculum guides is that they still teach Islamic theology as part of the regular curriculum.
However, in my experience, while speaking to educationalists and those on textbook boards associated with the government of Pakistan, the psychology of the minority students is not considered.
Nayyar further wrote, “The problems with the curriculum and textbooks are a continuation of the past practices that were widely criticized, and were held responsible for the growth of narrow-mindedness and extremism among the youth in the society.” The social studies textbooks analyzed for my study at the turn of the millennia [3] have not changed substantially since the 1980’s and are still in use in most schools.
They are decidedly anti-democratic and inclined to dogmatic tirades and characterized by internal contradictions. The social studies curriculum in Pakistan, as both product and propagator of the “Ideology of Pakistan,” derives its legitimacy from a narrow set of directives.
In the past decades, social studies textbooks in Pakistan have been used as locations to articulate the hatred that Pakistani policy makers have attempted to inculcate towards their Hindu neighbors.
“If it is not anti-Indianism, then in what other terms could we possibly render Pakistani-Muslim nationalism? [….] The ‘ideology of Pakistan’ as defined to students at every school and college in the country is nothing except anti-Indianism.
When discussing General Zia’a lasting influence on the teaching of social studies in Pakistan, a principal at a woman’s college in Lahore told me a joke, which she said was well known among intellectuals in the country, “General Zia– May He Rest in Pieces.” Indeed, after his airplane exploded in the sky, the pieces of his body were never found, along with the American ambassador and several other top brass generals on board the fatal flight.
The casket in Zia’s mausoleum near the beautiful Faizl Mosque built with Saudi money in Islamabad, purportedly contains only his false teeth, jawbone, and eyeglasses. The remaining weight of his coffin is compensated with sandbags.
Footnotes:
Bengali for “Freedom Army”
Note: In mid May 2016, the Bangladeshi government, under Sheik Hassina and the Awami League finally hung one of the Jamat-e-Islami razakars who worked with the Pakistani Army to kill Bengalis in 1971. He was convicted of murder and hung 45 years after the crime. The razakars were not prosecuted under Khalida Zia’s administrations, because they were often part of her coalition government.
“Islamization of Pakistani Social Studies Textbooks” RUPA, New Delhi, 2003.
“Ideological Crossroads”, The New International: June 10, 2001, <http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/jun2001-daily/10-06-2001/oped/o3.htm>)
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