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Breast-Beating Over a Coup

A day or two after General Musharraf threw out Nawaz Sharief, a woman I know sat down in our living room and mused. "What would you think if we had a military takeover here?" she asked. "What if it were a benevolent dictatorship? What if it were only for a short while?"

I interjected with the routine lines: "There's no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship," and "Once in power, they'll stay in power. Who's going to get rid of them when your 'short while' is over?" But of course, by now, the lady wasn't really listening to me. She had this dreamy look on her face and I could hear her murmuring her cherished hopes from such a prospect: "All these corrupt politicians will be put away where they belong, BJP, Congress, Sena, all of them ... there'll be some order in the country ...". I broke in and changed the subject before she got to that nostalgic chant you can hear from wistful Emergency buffs: "... and the trains will run on time!"

The next day, someone else I know sent me a long and anguished note about Pakistan's coup. In it, he lamented the celebrations there that greeted the end to Sharief's rule and the coming of Musharraf. What a sad commentary on democracy in Pakistan, he wrote, when people are actually celebrating a military takeover. And I thought: it's not just Pakistan where democracy's hold is this tenuous. There are enough Indians who long for somebody's iron hand, if gloved in velvet, to guide the ship of state. (If you'll pardon the metaphors.)

You can't fault them either, whether in India or in Pakistan. It's hard to believe in the virtues of democracy when democracy has given both countries the vast neglect, the sheer magnitude of problems, the craven people we are compelled to call leaders. "This country is cursed," none other than India's Defence Minister George Fernandes tells Amitav Ghosh in Ghosh's essay "Countdown", "to put up with a leadership that has chosen to sell it for their own personal aggrandizement." Did Fernandes count himself in there? Whatever, he was speaking of India, but he might have been speaking of Pakistan too. He might have been speaking for that woman in my living room just as much as for jubilant Pakistanis dancing in their streets when Sharief was removed.

And cursed like that, a military takeover begins to look tempting indeed. In fact, I'd be willing to stake good money that it's one of the fondest of the middle-classes' fond dreams, whether in India or Pakistan. Not that I'm happy about such yearning for velvet-wrapped fists. But the virtues of democracy get harder to peddle every day. And when that happens, history offers innumerable examples of dictatorships taking root. They find fertile soil in the charm they acquire in people's minds. (If you'll forgive the metaphors once more.)

Now let me hasten to point out that there have also been other reactions in India to Musharraf's doings. For example, there's the crowd that welcomes a return to military rule in Pakistan for a quite different reason. For them, Musharraf might just mean an opportunity for a final solution to the enmity between the countries. Yes, says this crowd, as you read from one of them here last week, "it's great to be gifted a chance to end it for once and for all." Which halleluia came, of course, complete with the obligatory dig at the wimps who might disagree: anything less belligerent could only be "breast-beating by our ever-pacific."

No two ways about it, I am an ever-pacific breast-beating wimp. So I can only gape in wonder at these souls -- far braver than me, naturally -- who want to duke it out with Pakistan. To "end it for once and for all."

For what does this final solution, this "end it" business, mean? Especially with the nuclear toys in both countries' basements, a final solution will truly be final. For us all. There's no hope of beating Pakistan into oblivion and living to tell the tale, because that country will certainly let loose its own toys and take us down with them. And even if somehow it doesn't, our own nuclear assault will simply wash back across the border to drown us in our own radioactive goo.

"End it," did someone say?

I gape, because I never stop being amazed at how profoundly these so-virile types wish to be dead. Dead. Oh sure, they aspire to nuclear bombs, to wars and massive armies, to being the world's next great power; they are fed up of being oppressed and discriminated against and pushed around and after all shouldn't Queen Elizabeth get down on her knees and apologize to us? All that, and it comes down to wanting to "end it for once and for all."

I find the transformation in half a century astonishing. From the dreams we had of building two flourishing democracies in this part of the world, we have produced a keenly-felt yearning for dictatorships. From the euphoria over winning self-rule after many centuries, we have driven ourselves to where self-obliteration looks attractive. To the point where we can see no other route to peace and self-respect but to "end it."

Here's Amitav Ghosh from "Countdown" again: "[S]omewhere within the shared collective psyche of India and Pakistan, the torment of an unalterable proximity has given birth to a kind of deathwish, an urge that is rising ever more insistently to the surface."

So in the fading hope that there are a few ever-pacific breast-beaters left, wimps who have both staved off the deathwish and are appalled by military rule, I'd like to urge some sanity.

Pakistan's history of military rule is all the evidence anyone in either country might need that Musharraf's route is the one to disaster. I realize its spells of civilian rule have hardly been exemplary attempts at democracy and governance, but at least in a democracy you get your regular chance at change. That's not much, given the leaders George Fernandes referred to, but it's something. After all, we in India just muddled through our latest such chance.

As for ending things. Actually, the wimps also want that: an end to the wearying, crippling, hostility between India and Pakistan. From men killed to opportunities lost to social problems left unsolved, the price we pay is enormous. When will that price hurt us enough that we refuse to pay it any longer?

Chasing that line of thought, I found an interesting editorial in the Guardian Weekly, September 9-15. "India's myopic election", it was called. It suggests: "A more thoughtful, more constructive Indian approach to both relations with Pakistan and the future of Kashmir is essential from whoever wins this poll."

Is that really too much to ask of AB Vajpayee, who did win it?

The editorial continues: "But it is India's enormous social problems, and its politicians' failure to pay them anything other than lip service, that has been the campaign's biggest disappointment. Of India's 1 billion people, 40% are illiterate; one-third lives in poverty. Discrimination on grounds of religion, caste and gender remains entrenched. Here is the fundamental challenge facing India's politicians. But where is the man or woman big enough to tackle it?"

How about it, Vajpayee? For that matter, Musharraf?

Dilip D'Souza