Dissing Ideologies

As war-mongering clouds our already murky skies, I struggle to contain increasingly surreal questions. Who exactly are these morons who claim to lead us? Who put them in charge? And more importantly, how is it that they can threaten to wage war on my behalf? I don't recall signing a release form for "every last drop of [my] blood." Yet Mr. Musharraf has charmingly promised exactly that on behalf of every citizen of the Islamic Republic. My response to him (and every other incipient mujahid that I have known since KG2) is to point north-wards, and extract a promise to call me when Srinagar is "liberated".

The macho, schoolyard-bully act that is apparent on both sides of the border smacks of the patriarchal pit that is sub-continental society. It would take a devoted team of Herr Freuds to decode the testosterone-laden bellicosity that leaders on both sides radiate. Highly paid ones too, if you throw in the endless displays of missiles of various ranges. Asad theorizes that there are only a handful of actual missiles; all that an Abdali to Ghaznavi morph requires is a bucket of paint and a steady hand. Not to say that chauvinism is a domain of the political elites alone. Last week, MSNBC brought me our home-grown Orientalist Akbar Ahmed, ruminating on the concept of Izzat and its effect on state relations. In a fit of feminist righteousness, Abby immediately conducted a statistical analysis of global politics, and found a startling correlation between confrontation and the number of males in positions of power. Her conclusion: if you want peace, send Ammi to Islamabad. Azad Kashmir may go to pot but we'll all get hot chapattis for lunch and mandatory monthly haircuts. Another appealing possibility is mortal kombat between our two gasbags Musharraf and Vajpayee. Or follow Douglas Adams' timeless principle: anyone who wants to be president should on no account be given the job.

Bhayeea used to keep a running total of Kashmiri shaheeds as reported by PTV. The precise number eludes me now, but by last year, it sure seemed like a fair percentage of Kashmiris were enjoying the hospitality of either houris or the Indian army. "Kashmir runs in our blood", thunders Mr. Musharraf. Really? The last time Kashmir ran in my blood was during Roohi Apa's mehndi, after four cups of sickly sweet pink tea.

The Pakistani government's "principled" stand on Kashmir - that of a plebiscite to determine the will of the Kashmiri people - seems like hypocrisy of the highest order. How about a plebiscite to determine the will of the Pakistani people? How many wars have actually been declared by my elected representatives? And how about a peek into our own proverbial "gireban"? This principled stand comes from a state that can technically stone a woman to death for getting herself raped, or hang people for either proclaiming or deriding some mumbo-jumbo in Arabic. Where are the denunciations of Iraq, Turkey or Indonesia, brother Muslim nations that have massacred millions of Kurds and East Timorese? Not to mention our own sordid history of the rape and butchery of countless Bengali innocents.

The jihad culture, an entirely predictable consequence of our Kashmir mania, has permeated urban life in Pakistan to an astonishing degree. The lady who does the dishes for my parents has a husband in an Afghan prison, one of the pitiful members of a resistance force assembled in Karachi to defend our Afghan brethren. This phenomenon is hardly new. In 1991, Kashmir was Cousin Jimmy's alleged destination after he was expelled from military school. Granted he turned up at a friend's house, fleeing from Daddy's expected wrath. But Kashmir and jihad were respectable causes that Mummy could proudly relate to us. Many years later, I discovered a Kashmiri jihad collection box at the local tandoor. And my last exercise in a mosque (Eid prayers 2000) was done in full view of a Kalashinkov wielding gent proclaiming liberation from a poster. "Tsk, tsk" was the only response that Abbu could muster, even after maulvi sahib's traditional harangue on Hindu, Nasihi and Yahoodi conspiracies. Not that conspiracy theories are limited to the maulvi alone. I have heard the missing-WTC-Jews theory from a friend's father, a respected industrialist. The weekly tanker chap narrated a similar "saazish", peppered with a wink and cursory Mossad reference. And even dear old Abbu spoke convincingly of American designs on "our" nuclear assets.

If saving "innocent Muslim people" (Kashmiri or otherwise) is really our intention, consider the following. The infant mortality rate in Pakistan stubbornly clings to the low 80's (83.3/1,000 births in 2001). Consider a foolish world where a state's worth lies in its social indicators, and not the size of its Oedipal arsenal. Reducing Pakistan's infant mortality rate to India's level (63.19 deaths/1,000 births) would translate to 86,676 saved lives every year (birth rate of 31.21 births/1,000 for a population of 138.1 million). Ironically enough, this number is remarkably close to the total number of deaths attributed to "Indian brutalities against the innocent Muslim people of Kashmir" over more than a decade.

All this for what, you ask? Something called the two-nation theory which, as every upright schoolchild knows, asserts that "Muslims are entirely separate people from Hindus in every respect... [they] form an ideological community with divine guidance for every field of human life." Fine and dandy, except that Bhayeea was unable to discover an original source, despite much research. Undefeated by the tragedy of 1971, the theory commands much ideological respect in both elitist and ordinary circles. Conveniently ignored in the unending quest for an identity other than that of the other is the historical fact that the founding fathers were ready to accept a confederal alternate to Partition as late as 1946.

The slums of Bombay are indistinguishable from those of Karachi. In that at least, the two nations stand united.