The Pakistani Spectator

The Pew Briefing Series arranged a seminar on the Role and Responsibility of a Democratic India at the Hudson Institute, a think-tank generally controlled by Neo con’s, in their Washington, D.C. Headquarters.  Ambassador Aftab Seth, former Indian Ambassador to Japan, Vietnam and Greece was the ‘Spin-Meister’ for Indian diplomacy with a very much Muslim name.  He claimed the great India believes in ‘culture of dialog’, but he didn’t want to answer a question on Indian Muslims miserable conditions in his country of great civilization. He seemed to be very proud of grandiosity of the 2,500 year old democratic system in India, which he claims produces the least number of terrorists Muslims, compared to neighbor Pakistani.

Though Ambassador Seth didn’t say, one could observe from his body language that he feels Pakistan is a Muslim state crafted by British after the sacrifice of over a million Muslim under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah whose (for some) favorite drink and favorite dish were anything but kosher.

Ambassador Teresita Schaffer, Director for South Asia Center for Strategic and International Studies was there to give a more realistic assessment of the Indian conditions and situation.  Amy Kauffman, Director of the Hudson Pew Briefing moderated the panel.

Among some Pakistani observers it’s well known that –prior to 9/11– for the purpose of playing a leading role in Pakistani politics, the Pakistani military had been obsessed of scarring Pakistanis and brain washing its school kids of the assumed Indian designs of domination toward its smaller neighbors, with the supposed collaboration of the Jewish — as if Jews had nothing else better to do than mess around with the poor Pakistanis.

Meanwhile, contradicting these sentiments, the Indian soft spoken and smiling diplomats, much like Ambassador Seth, love to lecture that the Indian democratic process, with its inclusiveness, pluralistic capabilities, and tolerance for any and all culture is naturally meant to create a harmony (a basic condition for democracy nourishment) among people of diverse and any backgrounds. A condition currently exists in the States but in India where communal clashes are norms.

Ambassador Seth stated that nations like Pakistan, established on the name of religion, don’t have much of a chance of success. He totally ignored other states like Israel and Saudi Arabia that were established on the name of their religions and are very much into existence with our American blessings, even though, for some, the both nations somewhat mistreat their religious minority group.

The Ambassador claims that the Muslim Pakistani state, created in the name of Islam, broke up into two parts with the creation of Bangladesh within a couple of decades of Pakistan’s creation.

For the purpose of gallivanting India’s success and responsibility of promoting democracy in Asia, Ambassador Seth stated how a Pakistani writer named Ayaz Amir, in 2004, had expressed his thoughts on feeling smaller than Indians as a Pakistani citizen whilst observing established democracy in neighbor India.

Ambassador Seth’s demeanor, which is a kind and of an elderly professor, prevented me from asking him a difficult question. I didn’t feel like asking him the meaning of the term ‘Sati,’ where a woman in the ‘very tolerant Indian society’ is forced to burn herself to death after the natural death of her husband.

Nor did I ask him of his thoughts on ‘Indian inclusiveness’, since he had not been born in a ‘Shoodur or untouchable’ family, a caste that is considered exclusive of Indian society in an unfavorable way.

However, I commented to him that he would find many people among his present audience who believe that the break up of Pakistan was a result of its army’s corruption, resulting from its supposed indulgence in controlling and exploiting its own poor population. It was not necessarily failure of Islam as a system for a Muslim state.

It’s a well known fact that the profound involvement in its civilian matters made Pakistani army too incompetent to fight the Indian army, whose sole job is to defend the nation from threats rather than oppressing Hindus masses for the benefit of the privileged Hindus, by the threats of martial laws and national emergencies, a common practice in Pakistan.

The ambassador didn’t like to elaborate on his premises of failure of Pakistan as a state merely because it came into existence on the name of Islam.  He picked the easy route by saying, yes; the Pakistani army’s incompetence was one of the factors for its losing East Pakistan.

I asked Ambassador Seth whether his advocacy of India as a very inclusive country made any sense since the fact that 150 million Muslim’s in India are treated as unworthy citizens in their own country.

I reminded him that, he knows better than I, the negligible decision maker number of Muslims in Indian civil bureaucracy, armed forces or any part of Indian establishment, except the lip services India gives by having someone with Muslim names as president of the country.

Instead of giving an honest answer that Indian Muslims are nothing more than the largest ghetto minority of India with over 150 million in numbers, Ambassador Seth kind of justified very poor Indian Muslim
Conditions by stating that every country has some poor pockets in certain segment of its society.

Before I asked him my follow up question about India’s lack of courage and vision in resolving the Kashmir issue, I gave him some room to breathe, so the Ambassador gives me an honest answer.

I raised my doubts about General Musharraf’s intentions, as he has been offering unsolicited assistance to Iran and the Palestinians for resolving their differences with America and Israel, respectively.  Many political pundits say that by considering Musharraf as an American stooge, both Iranian and Palestinian officials have asked him to mind his own business. He has been forced to oblige, by the way, not of his own accord, but of the numerous social, religious, and political problems in his country.

Then, I suggested to Ambassador Seth that it was perhaps for his own personal glory that General Musharraf had been shooting so many ideas about resolving Kashmir problem –- with some of the resolutions quite unacceptable to his own Pakistani people — at the Indians, who have had almost nothing to say back except Kashmir is an integral part of India.

I felt compelled telling the Ambassador that it’s Indians who would possibly gain the most in any deal on Kashmir offered by general Musharraf.

Once again Ambassador Seth didn’t have much to say.  He ignored, perhaps unintentionally, the reality that Pakistani army does not like to give much leverage to its hand picked democratic setups to resolve Kashmir issue. His answer was that Pakistani army’s dictatorship has been the most serious factor in spinning the political wheel of unresolved Kashmir matter for last 60 year.

Although I cognizance of the ease in which I was not very kind to the Pakistani Army, I did realize the Indian government’s strategy of using its articulate individual with Muslims names such as the Ambassador himself, as a propaganda tool to enhance its image of inclusiveness. I asked privately and very politely to Ambassador Seth of his religious background. He became even more ‘diplomatic’ than he was on the podium, by not answering my question directly.

I left the place with the feelings that besides Ambassador Seth there are many Americans, with all honesty I am not very different, and who are willing to play the role of Muslim political sell outs in this country.

It could be a very sweet talker like Ambassador Seth or an amateur writer like me, who from this land of freedom could cause serious damage to average Muslim interests in poor countries.

As a matter of fact, people like Ambassador Schaffer speak with a serious sense of integrity on South Asian issues in these international forums in Washington, I believe. Thus, they are the people who actually do a great favor to poor Muslim masses in third world than some of us so-called Muslims.

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