JOIN USPost Uri, the hysteric brand of nationalism that is going on in India borders on madness. There should be some sober reflection if we should nurture this mob hysteria as a nation, or as a matter of indirect state policy.
Having to find that whole communities are suddenly fixing their minds upon one object (read Pakistan-bashing as a national pastime), going mad in its pursuit and that millions of people are becoming simultaneously impressed with one delusion, brings one to mind Charles MacKay’s extraordinary thesis on the subject titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds published in 1841.
“We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses,” Mackay warned, “until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.” How prophetically true this sounds nearly 175 years later!
Not that Pakistan is rid of the hysteria. Tariq Ali in his book The Duel: Pakistan on the flight path of American power explained how the nuclear status of both India and Pakistan, particularly the assessment of a “jihadi threat” to Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have routinely given rise to statements that “border on hysteria”. The routine sabre-rattlings about destroying each other, with dark hints of nuclear annihilation from both sides, are bandied about with gay abandon whenever there is a face-off in the horizon.
Anatol Lieven has explained how Pakistan’s relatively smaller size and geography compared to India, has given the Pakistani security establishment a deep sense of paranoia. With the exception of the barren and thinly populated bulge of Balochistan in the south-west, Pakistan is basically a long thin country on either side of river Indus. Its second largest city, Lahore, is virtually on the Indian frontier, and the crucial highway linking Lahore and Karachi is, for long stretches, within 50 miles of Indian territory.
“This led in the past to a frequent obsession with strategic depth in the Pakistani military, which has had particularly damaging effects on Pakistani policy towards Afghanistan – seen as a potential source of that increased depth”, Lieven says. India, with its syncretic culture and secular values, cannot afford to act like Islamabad in case it seriously seeks to de-hyphenate itself from Pakistan.
Post Uri, there is another hysteria at play in India. The social media is awash with a different call for swadeshi movement – besides the call to boycott all Pakistani actors – a call to boycott Chinese goods. It is driven by the puerile logic that as China is proving itself the steadfast patron of Pakistan in blocking India’s UN bid on sanctioning Masood Azhar or blocking India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), such a stand is bound to give China a ‘costly’ lesson.
Going by the penetration of the Chinese products in Indian markets, it cannot be done without hurting Indian retailers and wholesalers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pushed for greater business integration with China at the BRICS Summit. As early as in 2016, India-China trade deficit was reported well above $44 billion. Hysteria must be made of sterner stuff.
‘Surgical strike’
One cannot help feeling that overplaying “surgical strike”, would, besides reaping some political fortune in the ensuing state elections for the BJP, have little value. We had already received a tepid response at the BRICS summit, where the heads of state only mouthed pious platitudes, even Russia, India’s decades-old trusted ally, fighting shy of an overly clear deprecatory stand against Pakistan which would have warmed the cockles of hearts in India.
That a lot many Pakistani artists choose to come to India speaks a lot about India’s superiority as a career destination. This game of expressing solidarity by boycotting Pakistani artists, who ideally should be viewed as ambassadors of goodwill in the fraught atmosphere of hatred and ill-will bedevilling the Indo-Pak relationship, or trying to judge one’s patriotism by the parameters of hatred for everything that Pakistan stands for, is a deeply dangerous one.
Just take a look at the evidence of Cyril Almeida, who created a furore with his Oct 6 report in the Dawn on the “confrontation” between its civilian and Army leaderships over Pakistan-based terror groups striking in India and Afghanistan. It shows that there are still some people who are bold enough to call the bluff of the Pakistani state and there is a section of Pakistani media which is brave enough to take on the state. Why must we capitulate to the spurious calls of patriotism from the likes of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) at the cost of our shared heritage?
Pakistan, as a state, may be a deeply flawed one. There may not be any ambivalence about terrorism being its state policy. But why must we conflate Pakistani terrorists with artists? Last year in support of Ghulam Ali being proscribed to perform in Mumbai, it was said that the singer was not welcome in Mumbai because its citizens had not forgiven Pakistan for its role in 26/11.
No one in his right mind would think about banning ‘Saare Jahan Se Achcha’ for the simple reason that Mohammed Iqbal was a Pakistani. Therefore, a call to ban the film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, made for an Indian audience, with Indian money and cast, just because it has one Pakistani artist, amounts to a cultural Nazism. Our national hysteria about Pakistan must stop.
The major sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation being in Pakistan might explain why, as historian, D N Jha put it aptly, “the Hindu revivalists are busy locating the epicentre of this culture in the elusive Saraswati valley”. Boycotting the Pakistani artists (or films, sports and music) might, by a flawed argument and extension, also come to mean forfeiting the legacy of Saadat Hasan Manto or Ismat Chughtai and our sub-continental baggage, including Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilisations.