Apart from their recently acquired gongs, there are more similarities between Ian Botham and Salman Rushdie than you might think. Both are talented and opinionated, and neither can be accused of false modesty. Both have worked in advertising, Beefy flogging Shredded Wheat, Rushdie cream cakes. Both have flirted with showbiz, in panto and with U2 respectively. Both have experimented with facial hair, with varying degrees of success. And both of them are unpopular in Pakistan.
Rushdie’s knighthood has, of course, provoked anger from hardline Islamists, although the foam-flecked reaction of government minister Ijaz ul-Haq rather overlooks the fact that if the author hadn’t become the subject of a fatwa back in 1989, he probably wouldn’t have got his knighthood. Botham is at less risk of violent retribution, but his quip that Pakistan was “a good place to send your mother-in-law”, and his bitter courtroom face-off with Imran Khan mean that meetings of his fan club in Lahore and Karachi are intimate affairs.
However, despite the risk of diplomatic incidents, Ian and Salman got their appointments at the palace. It’s hardly surprising, because, let’s face it, there aren’t many Brits who’ll go out of their way to stick up for Pakistan.
The irony is that the country is nominally on British side in the “war on terror”; it is President Musharraf’s bad luck that this lumps him together with Blair and Bush at a time when their stock is particularly low with the British people. And it’s not just the British. When Bob Woolmer died in March, the immediate assumption from the Jamaican police was that he’d been bumped off by a dodgy Pakistani bookie, or even one of the players. The idea that a stressed, overweight diabetic in late middle age might die of natural causes simply couldn’t compete with the received notion that Pakistanis are corrupt, vengeful, devious and violent.
Let’s get a few things straight. Dislike of Pakistan isn’t a knee-jerk reaction against people with brown skin. Middle-class mummies are quite happy to have their little darlings spending their gap years tramping through the backstreets of India and chilling on the beaches of Sri Lanka. But Pakistan’s different. They might catch something.
And despite the efforts of the late Bernard Manning and his brethren, the use of the word “Paki” as an all-purpose insult now says far more about the ignorance of the user than it does about the recipient.
Many Indians are offended by the word, not because of its racist overtones, but because it lumps them in with what they perceive to be that backward, ramshackle theocracy to the north-west. I remember back in 1997, a British Indian friend complaining that Pakistan was “muscling in” on India’s 50th anniversary celebrations. I pointed out that, thanks to the wonders of partition, it was Pakistan’s birthday too. “Yeah, but that’s not a proper country,” she sneered.
Of course Pakistan has many problems. But I want to appeal to a more benevolent national stereotype, the British instinct for fair play and love of the underdog. Go on. Say something nice about Pakistan today.
Guardian