Pakistan: A personal history

ANOTHER VISION

Pakistan: A personal history By Imran Khan, Bantam, Rs 599

In the closing chapter of this book, Imran Khan sounds quietly confident about his party, the Tehreek-e-Insaf, coming to power in next year’s elections. Buoyed by the immense turnouts at his rallies — 100,000 people attended a meeting in Karachi, which falls outside Khan’s traditional support base in Lahore — Khan writes, “Tehreek-e-Insaf is the idea whose time has come.”

The fruition of the idea will depend on the people. Khan, therefore, strives hard to project himself as the ideal choice in these pages. His political priorities are two-fold: opposition to American hegemony, which, he argues convincingly, has threatened Pakistan’s sovereignty and crippled its economy, and ridding Pakistan of corruption. Nearly 34,000 people have died since Pakistan agreed to fight America’s war on terror. The nation has lost $68 billion to the conflict (the total aid that came in during this period was $20 billion). Half-a-million people from the tribal areas are displaced, and over 50 per cent of the population is impoverished. No wonder people are flocking to Khan’s rallies in the hope of a political alternative.

That alternative, Khan argues, has to be based on Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s model of enlightened Islam. Integral to this vision are justice, compassion and freedom of thought. Khan demands that Pakistan disengages itself from the war on terror and refuses the aid that comes along as ‘incentive’. “Surgical reforms” to usher in transparency in governance, limiting the army’s powers, settlement of bilateral issues with India and a “truth and reconciliation process” to weed out militancy from tribal areas are also central to Khan’s political doctrine.

However, this idealist’s political vision is compromised by conservatism and contradictions. He seeks peace with India, but betrays an unmistakable anxiety over India’s presence in neighbouring Afghanistan. On Afpak, he writes, “The people of Afghanistan will have to find a solution for themselves without outside interference.” But Khan does not seem inclined to give the people of Kashmir the same degree of autonomy. He admires Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for threatening to wage a thousand-year war over Kashmir, and traces the rise of Islamic fundamentalism to the injustices perpetrated on Muslims in Kashmir, among other places — an argument that is routinely spouted to legitimize Pakistan’s support of insurgency in the strife-torn state. Khan also fails to provide a roadmap to counter the growing influence of the austere Wahhabism in the restive tribal belt that has weakened traditional Pashtun solidarity and encouraged jihad.

Khan’s efforts to reiterate Islam’s inherent democratic tenets and his elucidation of jihad are undoubtedly aimed at a Western audience. That the raging global conflicts are as political as they are cultural has not escaped his notice. Pakistanis will be reassured to know that Khan’s political inexperience is compensated by his integrity and hard work. These attributes are demonstrated in the chapters that describe how he overcame challenges — political, fiscal and bureaucratic — while constructing the cancer hospital.

Yet, an electoral triumph will be miraculous. For Pakistan continues to be zealously guarded by an ambitious army, and carries bitter memories of intermittent democratic experiments. There are other challenges: the lengthening shadow of America, a tottering economy and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

The wily Musharraf has described speculations of Khan heading a government as premature. For he knows that in Pakistan, good guys need not finish first.

UDDALAK MUKHERJEE