Tag Archives: India

Nuclear explosions and elections

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Interestingly, issues related to India and Kashmir are completely absent from political parties campaigning for the 2013 election. This could be perceived in both, a positive and negative manner. Positive because we appear, finally, to be out of that antagonists mindset, where India has to be rivalled at every cost and in every situation. And negative because we seem to be missing out on important developments in our neighbouring country and these developments are going to affect us in the long run.

Ironically, we do witness some glimpses of the nuclear energy issue in the campaigns, but even in this respect, the assertions of our political leaders do not appear aligned with latest developments. The developments have bypassed our political class and therefore have reinforced the perception that our political elite are ignorant and do not contribute to the strategic debate. In fact, watching these political leaders prattle uselessly on nuclear issue compels one to be believe that we don’t have informed debate on the nuclear energy issue in our society and in the process they have left the leave the field open for an obscure and limited group of military officials to make the decisions regarding nuclear energy — and this has fateful consequences for us as a nation.

The glimpses of nuclear issues presented by Rehman Malik, the former interior minister, who, while, addressing a press conference in Lahore (reported by Urdu newspapers) said that it was the military which conducted the nuclear tests in May 1998 and when Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, was informed he felt very scared. Apparently, Malik’s statement was meant to blunt the affects of Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz’s (PMLN) elections campaign, which prominently features Sharif as the statesman’ who conducted the nuclear tests and ensured Pakistan’s entry into nuclear club.

The fact that Malik made this statement after presiding over a meeting of party-ticket holders in Lahore, clearly indicate that Pakistan Peoples Party doesn’t want to let Sharif take credit for five nuclear explosions which were carried out by Pakistan on May 28, 1998. Sharif, on the other hand, has made it a point to include the visuals of nuclear explosions at Chagai in each of his campaign advertisements that are being show on television.

All this clearly reflects one thing: that Pakistan’s political class is still bogged down by the mindset that nuclear explosions are a capability of great jingoistic value. Malik’s statement assumes that carrying out nuclear explosions is a great act of valour which only Pakistan’s military is capable of. At the same time PMLN’s campaign advertisements want to pin this badge of bravery on the shoulder of their leader. It’s true that this is what the Pakistani public – especially the people in the urban areas of Central Punjab – would like to hear from their leaders before they decide who to vote for on May 11. But the character and style of politicians should be different from people from the performing arts (no offense), whose primary purpose is to attract an audience.

A general overview of nuclear developments in the region and in the country will show how out of touch with reality all this prattling is. When Pakistan carried out the nuclear explosions the mantra coming out of corridors of Pakistani security establishment was about how the nation has now attained a weapon which has made its defence “impregnable”. This has now changed. Now many a times will you hear the refrain that Pakistani nation and armed forces are ready to sacrifice their lives for defending their country’s “strategic weapons”. General (retd) Pervez Musharraf was the first Pakistani leader who started to “treat the nuclear arsenal as the vital interest to protect rather than the means to protect the Pakistani people.” This was the natural consequence of a situation where Pakistani nuclear weapons were facing twin threats from extremists from within the country and from ‘friendly’ US military forces stationed in Afghanistan, which (as reported by the American media) have carried out mock exercises to snatch weapons from Pakistani strategic forces. If the situation is so grim can the Pakistani political class afford to remain bogged down in the jingoistic mindset of 1990s?

The second and more depressing prospect with regard to our nuclear capability is related to our relations with India. Brigadier (retd) Feroz Hassan Khan, a former eminent member of country’s nuclear establishment, writes in Eating Grass, his latest book, that after coming under military pressure from India in the last 10 years, Pakistani armed forces have started integrating nuclear weapons into conventional war plans. “By the time the second peak of the crisis occurs in May 2002, the Pakistan military had finalised plans for integrating its conventional and nuclear forces … the crisis accelerated the pace of force planning and integration,” writes Khan in his book.

Now both the regional and international security experts are saying that Pakistani and Indian militaries are flirting with very dangerous military concepts and doctrines. Repeated flight testing of short-range tactical missiles, which can be used in the battlefield, by Pakistan clearly indicate its intentions to respond to India’s conventional attack with tactical nuclear weapons. Indian military planners, on the other hand, are flirting with a more dangerous Cold Start doctrine, under which they harbour the belief that they can punish Pakistan with their conventional military superiority and yet stop short of invoking Pakistan’s nuclear response. Indian military, in fact, tried to implement part of this concept in their military exercises close to Pakistan’s border in 2011. On the other hand, it was precisely at this time that our military conducted flight tests of its short range tactical missiles.

Now the question is that if the situation is potentially so unstable then can we afford to remain bogged down in our jingoistic mindset? Can we afford to feed Pakistani public on the same jingoistic jargon that could be so destabilising? Can we afford to leave this issue in the hands of obscure military officials, who rarely share their thoughts with the public? The answers to all these questions are in the negative. Instead, we should be engaging in an informed debate — a debate which can open avenues for making Pakistan more secure and less jingoistic.

And it is because of this reason that I argue that the complete absence of India from our election campaign is not a positive development. In fact I remember the 1997 election campaign when both PMLN and PPP used ‘bettering relations with India’ as the central issue of their election campaign. And it was because of this that the then prime minister gained enough confidence to initiate the normalisation process with India, which brought Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, to Lahore and Islamabad. Ironically, in the wake of the Lahore Summit, Pakistani and Indian experts were expected to meet regularly to exchange nuclear doctrines and concepts to avoid nuclear brinkmanship.

Unfortunately this process was disrupted as a result of military takeover in Pakistan.

Interview: Pankaj Mishra

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Pankaj Mishra is known for his anti-imperialist Weltanschauung. He writes in a magnificent style, weaves gripping narratives and does not mind ruffling a few feathers. His commentary on Niall Ferguson’s book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, became one of the most popular pieces of his writing, resulting in a spat between the two writers with diametrically opposed world views. Mishra recently spoke to the Herald about the concept behind his book, From the Ruins of Empire.

Q. How did you become interested in the history of western imperialism in Asia?
A. I suppose right from the moment you start thinking of yourself as someone who wants to be a writer, an engagement with the history of your country and region becomes imperative. Nothing is given to you in the way it is to, say, a writer in England or America. Their history and their place in the world is so clear and sharp, they only have to inherit it from others. But we, the people in India and Pakistan, are still in the process of working out our place in the world. Our national histories are full of distortions. They are not the most important guides for telling us about ourselves. So, when you start thinking seriously about writing, then you have to develop an interest in history.

Q. Some people have described From the Ruins of Empire as a response to Niall Ferguson; others view it as a continuation of Edward Said’s intellectual tradition. Which one of these two descriptions comes closer to your idea of the book?
A. Neither of them actually. I started thinking about this book long before I had read a single word written by Niall Ferguson. I can see how other people might see it as a response because it obviously highlights Asian voices, which are conspicuously absent from the kind of histories that people such as Ferguson have authored, the kind of histories that have become very important in the West, though they exclude, almost entirely, some of the most important, interesting and resonant voices from Asia. So, in that sense, it can be seen as a rejoinder but I certainly did not intend it to be that way because, frankly, I wrote a review and I think that is enough in terms of what I want to say about the whole school of imperial history writing at the moment.

Q. It appears that by focusing too much on history, you have largely ignored contemporary social trends in the Islamic world such as the rise of a new business-minded middle class that, according to Vali Nasr, will be instrumental in winning the battle against religious militancy and in shaping Muslim societies in the future. Your book, on the other hand, presents a bleak picture, claiming that “Islam remains a gigantic powder keg, likely to blow up any time.” How do you view the social trend that Nasr has mentioned and do you agree with his assertion?
A. I agree with that only up to a point. These predictions about business communities in the Muslim world can only come true if economic trends are looking up and if you are looking at flourishing capitalist economies in this region. Nobody today can say that Egypt is going to be a flourishing economy in the next five to 10 years. Nobody can say that about Tunisia. You can probably say that about a few of the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia or Malaysia. But you can’t even say that about Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world.
There is also an aspect of the modernisation theory here which assumes that the more prosperous people grow the more they secularise. I completely disagree with that. In Turkey that whole model doesn’t work. People can grow rich, commercial-minded and also become devout and political at the same time. So I think it is a pretty complex picture. And let’s not ever underestimate the role of Islam as a source of political solidarity and as a source of ideas about morality and justice in Muslim societies everywhere. Any political prediction that underestimates this role is likely to be wrong.

Q. Asian intellectuals were against the idea of imitating the West. What kind of political alternatives could Asian countries have developed to distinguish themselves from Europe’s imperialist states like Britain and France?
A. They could have evolved a better model if they had the opportunity. Their choices had radically shrunk by the middle of the 20th century when these nations began to become independent. Almost all countries that were previously part of large multinational empires or enjoyed a degree of autonomy were forced into this artificial model of the nation state. The formation of the European nation state was preceded by incredible violence. We are witnessing the same thing, maybe not on that same scale but certainly to an alarming degree, in large parts of Asia where much of national energy and resources have gone into holding on to territory and suppressing various ethnic minorities or religious groups that want to break away and exercise self-determination. So that is just one area where things could have worked out differently.

Q. It is not surprising that some western commentators describe you as a left-wing polemicist. But you also attracted bitter criticism in India. Why do you think that happened when you’ve written an original account of Western imperialism in Asia and have taken a highly credible view of it?
A. I think a book such as this [From the Ruins of Empire] which rubs up against conventional wisdom is bound to attract criticism and I would have been very disappointed if it hadn’t. People in this part of the world have come to know about a certain kind of imperial history in which Asian voices are completely excluded and the virtues of western empire are elaborated upon at great length. So, a history that suggests that some of the most educated and intelligent people in Asia did not see it this way at all and, in fact, were bitterly critical of European imperialism, its racial hierarchies and economic exploitation often comes as an unpleasant surprise to a lot of people here who have invested a great deal of emotional and intellectual energy in thinking themselves as a source of political wisdom.

Also, in places like India, there are a number of people who think it is very important to stand with American ideologies. So I think this notion that people in the late 19th century in India, China, Turkey or Egypt were thinking of other alternatives to this western model of politics and economy comes as a surprise to these Americanised commentators who are either ignorant of these intellectual histories or see them as quite threatening to their own ideas about the world.

Q. What are you planning to write next?
A. I think one of the things the book lacks is a sense of the present. Obviously, I could not have done that because it is a book of history, essentially. However, it rushes through the last 40 or 50 years and I keep thinking of a book that also selects some representative figures from places like South-east Asia, Java, Malaysia, Japan and China and describes their political and intellectual journeys in the post-1947 period. But that’s just an idea at this point.

Live discussion on Pakistan’s military doctrine – 2

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Is the shift in Pakistan’s military doctrine a case of too little, too late?

For the last 66 years, India has been Pakistan’s enemy number one — but this now seems to be changing, with military leaders and policy makers suggesting that internal security threats such as religious and ethnic militancy and the worsening law and order are posing a greater challenge to the country. Even the Green Book, which sets out the Pakistan’s Army’s strategic doctrine, has – for the first time – included a chapter titled “sub-conventional warfare” in its latest edition. On January 18, at 8:30 pm, the Herald has invited two panelists to discuss the consequences of this ostensible change in doctrine.

Ayesha-detailed

Political commentator Ayesha Siddiqa has written extensively on the military and related subjects.

haqqani-detailed

The former Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, Husain Haqqani, has authored a book titled Pakistan: Between mosque and military. He is currently a director at the Hudson Institute, Washington.

You can join the discussion or post your questions beforehand in the comments section below.

 

Live discussion on Pakistan’s military doctrine – 1

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Is the shift in Pakistan’s military doctrine a case of too little, too late?

For the last 66 years, India has been Pakistan’s enemy number one — but this now seems to be changing, with military leaders and policy makers suggesting that internal security threats such as religious and ethnic militancy and the worsening law and order are posing a greater challenge to the country. Even the Green Book, which sets out the Pakistan’s Army’s strategic doctrine, has – for the first time – included a chapter titled “sub-conventional warfare” in its latest edition. On January 16, at 7:30 pm, the Herald invited two panelists to discuss the consequences of this ostensible change in doctrine.

stephen-detailed

A renowned researcher on South Asian political and security issues, Stephen P Cohen is the editor of The Future of Pakistan, a collection of analytical essays.

shaukat-qadirdetailed

Brigadier (retd) Shaukat Qadir is an analyst who writes frequently on security issues.

You can join the discussion or post your questions below this post.

Live discussion with Aqil Shah

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Aqil Shah is a post-doctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He is writing a book on the origins and sources of sustained military intervention and weak civilian control in Pakistan. A former Rhodes Scholar, he holds a doctorate in Political Science from Columbia University and has held fellowships at Stanford and the University of Chicago. Dr Shah has taught at Columbia, UChicago and LUMS. He has also worked for the International Crisis Group in its South Asia office.

On June 21, 2012 the Herald invited Shah to a live discussion about the allocation of the defence budget. The blog has been edited for space, clarity and grammar.

2:57     Comment From Safa. What are the reasons behind the secrecy of the defence budget?

3:04  Aqil Shah. The military’s standard argument for secrecy is that defence expenditures involve “sensitive national security issues.” Hence, it objects to any civilian scrutiny on the grounds that outside interference would undermine its professional capabilities. The actual problem is that the military’s political dominance has allowed the generals to place themselves above reproach. And for the most part, the military does not trust civilians, especially their ability to keep “secrets.” Neither does it have much confidence in civilian capacity and acumen to understand military affairs. So there is a “trust us, we know better” attitude at work.  While all militaries are insular and secretive to varying degrees, and there is a case for not fully publicizing operational and intelligence matters, there is no convincing rationale for cloaking all military expenditures under the convenient pretext of “national security.” The public has every right to be informed about how their money is spent, a right that assumes added importance because of the military’s demonstrably poor recent professional performance (e.g. GHQ attack, Mehran base, U.S. raid to kill bin Laden)

3:06     Comment From M Anwer. Do you think the allocation of the defence budget is politically motivated?

3:09     Aqil Shah.  Resource allocation is a political process. The military gets what it wants because it wields the biggest stick in town. Because military budgets are shrouded in secrecy andPakistan’s national security policy is what the military says it is, it is hard to determine the connection between military expenditures and actual security imperatives.

3:10    Comment From Umair Javed. Hi Aqil, Umair Javed here (was in your CMR class at LUMS). Do you think that all this talk about the army’s gradual withdrawal from active politics holds any weight, and more importantly, do you think its fiscal appetite can be curtailed by any means other than by direct political confrontation, possibly in the shape of a popular mass movement?

3:20     Aqil Shah.  The military has left power, but it has yet to exit politics. Military extrication from government in 2007-2008 was primarily the result of the need to preserve its institutional reputation threatened by its close association with an isolated and deeply unpopular Musharraf.  Put differently, the military withdrew to the barracks contingently, not out of a commitment to democratic norms. This conditional adherence to civilian rule means that the military continues to view itself as the only permanent custodian of the country’s ‘permanent’ interests, which makes civilian authorities ‘temporary,’ and hence, ultimately disposable. The military also reserves the right to exercise broad oversight of the civilian government and overtly or covertly challenge or reverse civilian policy initiatives that impinge on its national security prerogatives. In fact, intervention is still a legitimate option in the military’s institutional mind-set. In the words of COAS General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, “military interventions are sometimes necessary to maintainPakistan’s stability…temporary bypasses that are created when a bridge collapses on democracy’s highway. After the bridge is repaired, then there’s no longer any need for the detour.”

I am a little sceptical of the actual “democratic” outcomes of “mass movements,” especially when they are based on violent means.   Research has shown that non-violent mass uprisings have been more successful in achieving democratic ends in part because they are more likely to win broader domestic (and external) legitimacy. I think democratic institutionalization, a slow and uncertain process no doubt, may offer a more reliable way of clipping the generals’ political and financial wings.

3:21     Comment From Hassan. How does Pakistan‘s Defence Budget stands against that of India‘s? Is that something our policy makers look at? Our defence budget is 18% of total budget (please correct if wrong), does India also give roughly the same percentage to its defence budget?

3:26     Aqil Shah.  The official rationale for the amount of defence spending is that Pakistan needs to match India’s military capabilities. India’s military budget is roughly four to five times higher than Pakistan’s total defence allocation in absolute terms, but India allocates a lower percentage of its government expenditure (15-17 % on average) than Pakistan (actually around 25-28 %). But remember, India’s economy is also bigger and growing much faster than Pakistan’s. So the real question is: can we really afford the existing levels of military expenditures given our national economic conditions/resources? When a country spends seven to ten times more on arms than primary education, there is something seriously wrong with its national priorities.

3:27     Comment From Qayum Khan. Pakistan has been under several martial coups, how does the shroud on the defence budget change in those years?

3:30     Aqil Shah. Military expenditures have rarely been transparent, regardless of who is in power. Under military rule, I believe even the perfunctory civilian oversight is diminished. At least in theory, democratic-civilian rule offers more space for debating military expenditures in the public domain than military authoritarian rule.

3:31     Comment From Dara S. What is the biggest problem with the defence budget this year? What is the issue most people have with it?

3:36     Aqil Shah. One of the biggest issues is the absolute lack of transparency and civilian scrutiny. We don’t know the real extent of the military budget. The official allocation for 2012-2013 stands at Rs 545 billion which is highly misleading. Some independent estimates put the actual budget at Rs 800-900 billion, almost double the allocated amount. This is because the estimated budget does not include internal security expenditures, military pensions, debt on military loans, arms purchases, etc. Second, the information disclosed indicates that salaries absorb almost fifty percent of the military budget, which is quite skewed in terms of the ratio between money spent on actual combat preparedness and on personnel maintenance. Put simply, the military spends less on improving its battleground effectiveness than on non-combat expenses. 

3:44     Comment From Muhammad Faryad. Is it true that the changing nature of warfare (remote controlled weapons, cyber warfare, and terrorism, to name a few) requires more investment in educational, technological, and industrial development of the nation to be able to defend the nation from internal and external threats? Or is this just an exaggeration the military propagates?

3:47     Aqil Shah. There is certainly an argument to be made about the need to invest in human and technological capital amidst the changing tenor of modern warfare. But in a world of scarce resources, there is also a trade-off between what a country can spend on developing an advanced military machine and what it invests in building human capabilities and providing basic human security from hunger, disease and poverty.

3:48     Comment From Gul. They say that Pakistan’s foreign policy can be summarised in one word: India. Is this the sole reason for our oversized defence budget or does the Taliban also have a lot to do with it?

3:52     Aqil Shah. Traditionally, the size of military budgets has been driven by the perceived threat from India. Internal security threats, Taliban and the like, have become more salient especially since 9/11. However, the military’s main mission is still fighting India and its doctrines, training, perceptions are largely products of the threat from the east. The military establishment tends to see internal threats as part of “enemy/India designs” to destabilize Pakistan from within. Hence, domestic and external threats are deeply intertwined in its national security policies.

3:54     Comment From M Anwer. The government has to appease the media, the people and the army. Do you think this years’ defence budget has appeased anyone?

3:59     Aqil Shah. As far as defence spending is concerned, the civilian government has no real space to appease anyone except the armed forces. The military budget is usually not subject to change because of civilian preferences. The dominant right-wing sections of the media, as well as military-sponsored “defense analysts,” play an important role in constantly refurbishing the military’s “national security” narrative that helps legitimate large and unaccountable military spending. In that sense, you can say that the media acts as an additional pressure group that restricts the civilian government’s already limited room to manoeuvre.

4:01     Aqil Shah. I would love to answer more questions but the time has run out. Thank you for your participation.

The subcontinental middle class

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Back in the early 1990s — When I was new entry into the field of journalism I remember meeting a very senior government official in the foreign policy establishment of the country along with other fellow journalists. Back then, Pakistan had just re-entered the democratic experience and economic conditions were ostensibly not as bad as they now seemed to be. However, Indians had just embarked on the path of economic liberalization and the news about early success of the program was reaching Pakistani society. What this senior official said to us seemed prophetic now. As part of a discourse on Pak-India relations, he said that he dreaded the time when Pakistani middle class would envy Indian middle classes. My hindsight compels me to conclude that what the Pakistani government official said was right. The time when Pakistani middle classes will envy and copy Indian middle classes has arrived.

Last week the respected London-based magazine, The Economist, did a cover story on India. One interesting fact reported in the story is that Indians are now taller than they were in early 1990s when the Indian government started the policies of economic liberalization,  “…For many Indians, a decade long boom has brought obvious gains. Some are physical: a study in the National Medical Journal of India last year, looking at Children among India’s wealthier population, found that at the age of 18 boys are 4.5 cm taller and 4 kg heavier than they were in 1992, when the economic reform just got going” reads the Economist. And who among the Pakistani would not like their young ones to be taller than they are? Being a father myself I can confess that each day starts with looking at your son sleeping in the cot and making guesses about the increase in height at this early stage of his life. Difficult to say how the people in Pakistan will react to this news that Indians are now taller than they were in 1990s (or before 1990s) and how their chauvinistic feeling (that they are fed with by the overly militarized state apparatus) will be affected if this news is reproduced in Pakistani media at a large scale. But one can have some sense about the popularity of Indian middle class ethos in Pakistani society by just looking at the scale of popularity of Bollywood movies in Pakistan. These movies reflect the middle class ethos of Indian society and the emerging culture of consumerism (the characteristic of consumerism has been identified as the main characteristic of middle class) in Indian society.

But this will be too simplistic a view of comparing Indian and Pakistani societies. Again comparing the upturn of Indian economy with the downturn of Pakistani economy will only produce a number of clichés and stereotypes that our media, now-a-days, is filled with. Let us discuss something different. A few months back I was astonished to the read the views of one of our leading ideologue, former Director General of ISI, General (Retd) Hameed Gul, who told a foreign newspaper that India was on the wrong side of history and therefore it would not be able to control the centrifugal forces in its society and hence there were no chances of India emerging as a great power in the coming decades. This is akin to other stereotypes about Indian society that we are regularly fed with. For instance, when we went to war with India, almost half a century ago, we were told (mostly through media) that Indians were shorter and thinner and therefore were unfit for fighting. This proved wrong when our army was met with six feet tall Indians in the battlefields. We are told that Indian society is divided into water-tight compartments of castes and the upper castes (which is smaller in number) will never allow the lower castes (which are large in number) to rise and become economically affluent. Traditional Pakistani writers saw lower castes as potential fifth columnists in Indian society which will rise against the Hindu upper caste dominated state at the centre. So in the traditional Pakistani scholarly works on India the lower castes are identified as centrifugal forces in Indian society. The events of past two decades have clearly shown that Indian society is transforming itself and lower castes are in the driving seat as far as Indian political system is concerned.

Two, apparently, unrelated developments in Indian politics have contributed heavily in broadening the base of Indian political system. First, are the economic liberalization policies of early 1990s and second is the policy of reservation of quotas in universities, government services and to some extent private sector for the backward classes of Indian society. These two developments gave rise to the emergence of lower caste middle class in the urban areas of Indian society. This lower caste middle class has shown a strong commitment to parliamentary democracy in the last 20 years as has been demonstrated by the voting patterns in parliamentary elections inIndia. Christophe Jafferelot, a French author, who has spent a life time studying Indian politics and sociology, has written in his latest work that all the lower caste put together constitute around 70 per cent of Indian society and in the past 20 years (following the emergence of Indian lower caste middle class) they have voted their fellow lower caste candidates and lower caste based political parties into parliament and state assemblies. This has resulted not only in taking the benefits of Indian economic progress to the backward classes and groups of Indian society but bringing these groups into the mainstream of Indian politics. Number of lower caste middle class people Jafferelot interviewed for his work showed strong commitment towards India’s parliamentary democracy “Insofar as it permitted the empowerment of the lower castes”.

I think nobody should deny the Pakistani state the right to carry out propaganda against India (till the time we are ready to shun our obsession with India as a perennial enemy). However the problem with this kind of propaganda is that at the end of the day, we are the only victims of this propaganda. Second problem is that this kind of thinking has stunted our mental growth and prevented us from learning from Indian experience. Surely this mindset has played no small role, over the years, in preventing us from broadening the base of our political system. Instead of accommodating more and more fringe groups into the mainstream of our politics, we have followed the programme of religiously, politically and socially excommunicating ethnic, religious groups and nationalities from our mainstream. This has stunted the growth of our political system. Perhaps the biggest feat of Indian political system is that it has grown broader and bigger by accommodating more and more groups into the mainstream. And we have been creating more fringe groups in each decade of our 60 years of history. The warning of history is not difficult to understand: if we don’t pay heed right now shortening of our system will not be measured in centimetres, but in miles.

The thrill of discovery

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Rakhshanda Jalil

Rakhshanda Jalil: I believe translation is a skill acquired from long hours of constancy and industry. It rests on the cornerstone of fidelity and humility. – Herald Photo

There was a time, not very long ago, when all we had by way of translations in India were the Jatak katha, Panchatantra, Gita or Mahabharata in English. The launch of Penguin India in the mid-1980s and the publication of Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, the seminal Partition novel translated from Hindi, opened the floodgates. Suddenly we had translations coming out of our ears, from various bhashas literature (regional literature) into English as well as into/between the vernaculars.

This was a largely unexpected and entirely fortuitous turn of events in a country that has changed Indian Writing in English (IWE) into a national obsession. While writers of IWE are inevitably feted and lionised at lit-fests, translators too are gradually emerging from the shadows. Translations now command equal space in literary magazines, just as translators too can demand equal rights: 10 per cent royalty and a book launch with canapés and cocktails to boot.

Over the past 20 years in India, translations have, stealthily but surely, made a space for themselves not only in the trade but in the public consciousness, as is evident from the numbers of translated books displayed in local bookstores, popular awards for translators as well as the relatively painless hunt for publishers. I would venture so far as to say that translations have become a cottage industry of sorts, especially the business of compiling short stories from and into various languages. Anthologies offer a smorgasbord, or a tasting menu of sorts, into the great storehouse of Indian literature and enterprising translators/editors peg their collections in many innovative ways: women’s writing, South Asian writing, Dalit writing, coming-of-age writing, regional writing, Partition writing and call-it-what-you-will writing. As is often the case when it comes to challenges, we occasionally have random, indiscriminate, patchy, a mélange of the good, bad, and indifferent translations being cobbled together with one eye on political correctness and the other on cost-effective publishing. The idea seems to be to translate freely, prolifically and indiscriminately for there is a place for everything in a market that is showing no signs of saturation. This, I believe, is a disservice to translations generally and to the task of introducing regional literatures to younger, fresher audiences in particular.

Having said that, only a handful of the burgeoning collections of short stories, especially from the bhasha literatures, ever fail my personal litmus test. Having read and reviewed scores of such translations – and edited a couple of ‘samplers’ myself – as long as I chance upon something that opens a window into a world that is new and familiar, that has the power to delight and amaze, I feel the business of anthologising and translating might be done to death but cannot be done away with. For students of literature in South Asia, as well as those from the South Asian diaspora who look upon the bhasha literatures from their part of the world as being a vital link with their cultural heritage but use English as an effective first language, translations offer the only glimpse into an otherwise closed world. So while many veterans in the business of translating, editing or reviewing rue the presence of certain authors or certain stories popping up like tired ghosts in most anthologies of ‘modern Indian fiction’ or certain authors and stories being mistaken for being ‘most representative’ simply because they are ‘most anthologised’, there is no denying that as long as a work of translation meets the needs of a wide variety of readers the purpose behind the endeavour is met.

Having burnt my fingers with technical translations many years ago, I have since stuck to literary translations. Moreover, since I steadfastly refuse to indulge in commissioned work, I enjoy the luxury of translating precisely what I want or whatever – a story, an essay, a poem, a stray fragment  – catches my fancy. The pleasure of sharing a tremulous sense of wonder that a piece of literature evokes with a wider audience that is sadly bereft due to the constraints of language and script is its own reward.

A perfect example is my introduction to the world of Phanishwar Nath Renu, a Hindi writer from Bihar. The thrill of discovering something that was at once so inexplicably real, and hence so immediate, despite being grounded in a milieu that was completely alien to me, was indescribable. That thrill stayed with me as I chanced upon story after story with characters and locations steeped in Bihar — a state which, incidentally, I have never visited and am, therefore, not familiar with, yet beckoned me first as a reader and later as a translator. All the while looking for the known and the familiar, the more I read, the more this duality grew until in a strange way it resolved itself with the slowly-dawning realisation that for a good writer, character, plot and narration are mere props. The real focus is the story and in the telling. If the writer can, perchance, touch the reader at some level – be it emotional or intellectual – then the remoteness of its setting or the strangeness of its characters is of little consequence. This sense of wonder has to be shared for it to be truly pleasure-giving.

At the same time, as a translator, it is best not to suffer from delusions of grandeur. A translation has been likened to looking at the wrong side of a carpet; the colour, sheen, intricacy of the ‘right’ side is missing. The patterns, outlines, motifs and designs are all there, but they are muted and no match for the original. The translator can, at best, convey a ‘sense’ of the sights and sounds of the original, transfer the meaning from one vocabulary bank to another but must, inevitably, lose some of it in the process. He/she can mimic the rhythms and patterns of the source language, never match it cadence for cadence in the target language. Those who claim otherwise are simply deluding themselves. For, I believe translation is a skill acquired from long hours of constancy and industry. It rests on the cornerstone of fidelity and humility.

Rakhshanda Jalil has published translations of Premchand, Manto, Rashid Ahmad Siddiqui, Shahryar, Intizar Husain, Renu among several others.

The Herald is Pakistan’s premier current affairs magazine published by the Dawn Media Group every month from Karachi.

Pakistan’s nuclear bayonet

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Pakistan Army personnel with a fighter jet

An extremist takeover of Pakistan is probably no further than five to 10 years away. Even today, some radical Islamists are advocating war against America.

In an enthusiastic moment, Napoleon is said to have remarked: “Bayonets are wonderful! One can do anything with them except sit on them!” Pakistan’s political and military establishment glows with similar enthusiasm about its nuclear weapons. Following the 1998 nuclear tests, it saw “The Bomb” as a panacea for solving Pakistan’s multiple problems. It became axiomatic that, in addition to providing total security, “The Bomb” would give Pakistan international visibility, help liberate Kashmir, create national pride and elevate the country’s technological status. But the hopes and goals were quite different from those of earlier days.

Back then, there was just one reason for wanting “The Bomb” — Indian nukes had to be countered by Pakistani nukes. Indeed, in 1965, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had uttered his famous statement about “The Bomb”: if India got it “then we shall have to eat grass and get one, or buy one, of our own.” In the famous Multan meeting that followed India’s victory in the 1971 war, Bhutto demanded from Pakistani scientists that they map out a nuclear weapons programme to counter India’s. Pakistan was pushed further into the nuclear arena by the Indian test of May 1974.

Although challenged again to equalise forces by a series of five Indian nuclear tests in May 1998, Pakistan was initially reluctant to test its own weapons for fear of international sanctions. Much soul-searching followed. But foolish taunts and threats by Indian leaders such as L K Advani and George Fernandes forced Pakistan over the edge that same month, a fact that India now surely regrets.

Pakistan’s nuclear success changed attitudes instantly. A super-confident military suddenly saw nuclear weapons as a talisman; having nukes-for-nukes became secondary. “The Bomb” became the means for neutralising India’s far larger conventional land, air and sea forces. This thinking soon translated into action. Just months after the 1998 nuclear tests, Pakistani troops and militants, protected by a nuclear shield, crossed the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir into Kargil. Militant Islamic groups freely organised across Pakistan. When the Mumbai attacks eventually followed in 2008, India could do little more than froth and fume.

A third purpose, which is still emerging, is subtler but critically important: our nukes generate income. Hard economic times have befallen Pakistan: loadshedding and fuel shortages routinely shut down industries and transport for long stretches, imports far exceed exports, inflation is at the double-digit level, foreign direct investment is negligible because of concerns over physical security, tax reform has failed, and corruption remains unchecked. An African country like Somalia or Congo would have long ago sunk under this weight. But, like nuclear North Korea, Pakistan feels protected. It knows that international financial donors are compelled to keep pumping in funds. Else a collapsing Pakistan would be unable to prevent its 80+ Hiroshima-sized nukes from disappearing into the darkness.

Over time, then, the country’s nuclear bayonet has gained more than just deterrence value; it is a dream instrument for any ruling oligarchy. Unlike Napoleon’s bayonet – painful to sit upon – nukes offer no such discomfort. Unsurprisingly, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf often referred to them as Pakistan’s “crown jewels”. One recalls that immediately after 9/11 he declared these “assets” were to be protected at all costs — even if this meant accepting American demands to dump the Taliban.

But can our nukes lose their magic? Be stolen, rendered impotent or lose the charm through which they bring in precious revenue? More fundamentally, how and when could they fail to deter?

A turning point could possibly come with Mumbai-II. This is no idle speculation. The military establishment’s reluctance to clamp down on anti-India jihadi groups, or to punish those who carried out Mumbai-I, makes a second Pakistan-based attack simply a matter of time. Although not officially assisted or sanctioned, it would create fury in India. What then? How would India respond?

There cannot, of course, be a definite answer. But it is instructive to analyse Operation Parakram, India’s response to the attack on the Indian parliament on December 13, 2001. This 10-month-long mobilisation of nearly half a million soldiers and deployment of troops along the LOC was launched to punish Pakistan for harbouring the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which, at least initially, had claimed responsibility for the attack. When Parakram fizzled out, Pakistan claimed victory and India was left licking its wounds.

A seminar held in August 2003 in Delhi brought together senior Indian military leaders and top analysts to reflect on Parakram. To quote the main speaker, Major-General Ashok Mehta, the two countries hovered on the brink of war and India’s “coercive diplomacy failed due to the mismatch of India-US diplomacy and India’s failure to think through the end game”. The general gave several reasons for not going to war against Pakistan. These included a negative cost-benefit analysis, lack of enthusiasm in the Indian political establishment, complications arising from the Gujarat riots of 2002 and “a lack of courage”. That Parakram would have America’s unflinching support also turned out to be a false assumption.

A second important opinion, articulated by the influential former Indian intelligence chief, Lieutenant-General Vikram Sood, was still harsher on India. He expressed regret at not going to war against Pakistan and said that India had “failed to achieve strategic space as well as strategic autonomy”. He went on to say that Musharraf never took India seriously after it lost this golden opportunity to attack a distracted Pakistan that was waging war against the Taliban on the Durand Line. Using the word “imbroglio” for India’s punitive attempt, he pointed out that no political directive had been provided to the service chiefs for execution even as late as August 2002. On the contrary, the Chief of Army Staff was asked to draw up a directive that month to extricate the army.

Now that the finger-pointing, recriminations and stock-taking are over, one can be sure that India will not permit a second Parakram. Indeed, a new paradigm for dealing with Pakistan has emerged and is encoded into strategies such as Cold Start. These call for quick, salami-slicing thrusts into Pakistan while learning to fight a conventional war under a “nuclear overhang” (by itself an interesting new phrase, used by General Deepak Kapoor in January 2010).

On this score, recent revelations by WikiLeaks are worthy of consideration. In a classified cable to Washington in February 2010, Tim Roemer, the US ambassador to India, described Cold Start as “not a plan for a comprehensive invasion and occupation of Pakistan” but “for a rapid, time- and distance-limited penetration into Pakistani territory”. He wrote that “it is the collective judgment of the US Mission that India would encounter mixed results.” Warning India against Cold Start, he concluded that “Indian leaders no doubt realise that although Cold Start is designed to punish Pakistan in a limited manner without triggering a nuclear response, they cannot be sure whether Pakistani leaders will in fact refrain from such a response.”

Roemer is spot on. Implementing Cold Start, which might be triggered by Mumbai-II, may well initiate a nuclear disaster. Indeed, there is no way to predict how such conflicts will end once they start. Therefore a rational Indian leadership – which one can only hope would exist at that particular time – is unlikely to opt for it. But even in this optimistic scenario, Mumbai-II would likely be a bigger disaster for Pakistan than for India. Yes, Pakistani nukes would be unhurt and unused, but their magic would have evaporated.

The reason is clear: an aggrieved India would campaign – with a high chance of success – for ending all international aid for Pakistan, a trade boycott and stiff sanctions. The world’s fear of loose Pakistani nukes hijacked by Islamist forces would be overcome by the international revulsion of yet another stomach-churning massacre. With little fat to spare in the economy, collapse may happen over weeks rather than months. Bravado in Pakistan would be intense at first but would fast evaporate.

Foodstuffs, electricity, gas and petrol would disappear. China and Saudi Arabia would send messages of sympathy and some aid, but they would not make up the difference. With scarcity all around, angry mobs would burn grid stations and petrol pumps, loot shops, and plunder the houses of the rich. Today’s barely governable Pakistan would become ungovernable. The government then in power, whether civilian or military, would exist only in name. Religious and regional forces would pounce upon their chances; Pakistan would descend into hellish anarchy.

In another scenario, could Pakistan’s nukes be stolen by Islamist radicals? America’s worries about this are dismissed by most Pakistanis who consider these fears to be unfounded and suspect such US claims to be hiding bad intent. They point out that the professionalism of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which has custodial responsibility of the weapons, has been praised by many visitors. Reassuring words have also come from visiting American politicians like Senator Joe Lieberman. With US tutoring and funds, SPD says it has implemented various technical precautions such as improved perimeter security, installation of electronic locks and security devices such as Permissive Action Links, and a personnel reliability programme.

For all this, procedures and technical fixes are only as good as the men who operate them. For example, more or better weapons could not have prevented Governor Salmaan Taseer from being gunned down by his own guards. This incident, as well as numerous insider attacks upon the military and Inter-Services Intelligence, raise the spectre of a mutiny in nuclear quarters. Given Pakistan’s radicalised and trenchantly anti-American environment, it is hard to argue that this would be impossible in a state of crisis.

Since the nukes may not be safe from radicals, it is logical to assume that the US must have extensively war-gamed the situation. Contingency plans would be put into operation once there is actionable intelligence of Pakistan’s nukes getting loose, or if a radical regime takes over and makes overt threats. What could these plans be, and would they really work?

An article published in The New Yorker in November 2009 by Seymour Hersh created waves in Pakistan. He wrote that US emergency plans exist for taking the sting out of Pakistan’s nukes by seizing their trigger mechanisms. He also claimed that an alarm, apparently related to a missing nuclear bomb component, had caused a US rapid response team to fly to Dubai. The alarm proved false and the team was recalled before it reached Pakistan. The Pakistan foreign ministry, as well as the US embassy in Islamabad, vigorously denied any such episode.

What should one make of Hersh’s claim? First, it is highly unlikely that the US has accurate knowledge of the storage locations of Pakistan’s nukes, especially since they (or look-alike dummies) are mobile. Extensive underground tunnels reportedly exist within which they can be freely moved. Second, even if a location is exactly known, it would be heavily guarded. This implies many casualties on both sides when intruding troops are engaged, thus making a secret operation impossible. Third, attacking a Pakistani nuclear site would be an act of war with totally unacceptable consequences for the US, particularly in view of its Afghan difficulties. All of this suggests that Hersh’s source of information was defective.

How would the US actually react to theft? Ill-informed TV anchors have screamed hysterically about Blackwater and US forces descending to grab the country’s nukes. But in a hypothetical crisis where the US has decided to take on Pakistan, its preferred military option would not be ground forces. Instead it would opt for precision Massive Ordnance Penetrator 30,000-pound bombs dropped by B-2 bombers or fry the circuit boards of the warheads using short, high-energy bursts of microwave energy from low-flying aircraft. But deeply buried warheads, or those with adequate metallic shielding, would still remain safe.

A US attack on Pakistan’s nuclear production or storage sites would, however, be monumental stupidity. Even if a single nuke escapes destruction, that last one could cause catastrophic damage. But the situation is immensely more uncertain and dangerous than a single surviving nuke. Even if the US knows the precise numbers of deployed weapons, it simply cannot know all their position coordinates. India, one imagines, would know even less.

Hence the bottom line: there is no way for any external power, whether America or India, to effectively deal with Pakistan’s nukes. Is this good news? Yes and no. While nuclear survivability increases Pakistani confidence and prevents dangerous knee-jerk reactions, it has also encouraged adventurism — the consequences of which Pakistan had to pay after Kargil.

An extremist takeover of Pakistan is probably no further than five to 10 years away. Even today, some radical Islamists are advocating war against America. But such a war would end Pakistan as a nation state even if no nukes are ever used. Saving Pakistan from religious extremism will require the army, which alone has power over critical decisions, to stop using its old bag of tricks. It must stop pretending that the threat lies across our borders when in fact the threat lies within. Napoleon’s bayonet ultimately could not save him, and Pakistan’s nuclear bayonet has also had its day. It cannot protect the country. Instead, Pakistan needs peace, economic justice, rule of law, tax reform, a social contract, education and a new federation agreement.

The author is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad