| Diplomatic, moral, political support to 'Kashmir cause' | | Pakistan a 'fake' state; it's a 'non-state' | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Feb 6: Pakistan yesterday again reiterated its diplomatic, moral and political support to what it called "Kashmir cause". It extended its support while observing Kashmir solidarity day, Pakistan observes February 5 each year as Kashmir solidarity day. It is strange that a state which is on the verge of collapse and which has been witnessing bloodshed and a sort of civil war for years now, has been poking its dirty nose in Jammu & Kashmir, which is legally, constitutionally, politically, morally and civilisationallly an integral part of India.
Pakistan is not a state in the real sense of the term. It is an aberration and unnatural formation. Even independent and unbiased observers dismiss Pakistan as a "fake" state and as a "non-state". Take, for example, Dr Jay Dubashi, a renowned economist, commentator and keen Pakistan-watcher, and Press Council of India (PCI) chairman, Justice (Retd) Markandey Katju, a "liberated" Kashmiri Hindu.
In his excellent political essay on India-Pakistan relations "We are wasting too much energy on Paki barbarians", which appeared only last week, Dubashi, among other things, wrote: "I have said a number of times…that there is no country called Pakistan and what we call Pakistan is a figment of wild imagination. It looks like a country and is shown like a country on the map but it ceased to be a country long ago. It does not have a proper government, a proper administration, proper laws and a proper constitution. It is not a failed state, as some people say; it is a non-state, with a non-government, a non-president, and an army that consists not of soldiers, but of thugs. God alone knows who rules it and where they get the money to run it. On the face of it, it gets the cash from the Americans who are anxious to use its space for their army's sorties in Afghanistan. It is more like a huge parking space for the Americans, and when their cars go back home, there will be no hand-outs from Washington, and the spaces will be vacant again and possibly taken over by the Taliban, who are waiting for the kill behind the mountains. That will be the end of what is called Pakistan and even the maps will stop showing it.
If Pakistan is a non-country, like Somalia or Congo in Africa, the Paki military is also a non-military. It is a gangster army controlled by other gangsters in military uniforms, as you have, or used to have in Latin America. They are probably controlled by the ISI, which probably controls the government as well. In fact, nobody knows who controls what. All we know is that the loot is parked in foreign banks and is probably parcelled out every where so often. The president himself was once known as Ten Per Cent, and there are almost certainly other per cent wallas, including Chief of Army Staff and others, and the men who run the ISI". One cannot but agree with him hundred per cent.
As for Justice Katju, he on Tuesday dismissed Pakistan as a "fake" country while speaking in a seminar. "First of all let me tell you one thing Pakistan is no country. It's like a fake country, it's artificially created country by the British who had the policy of divide and rule by starting this bogus two-nation theory that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations," he said at a panel discussion.
That a person of the stature and background of Justice Katju dismissed Pakistan as a "fake" country must clear the doubts, if any, and establish that Pakistan was the by-product of intrigues, conspiracies and worst form of communalism. However, one would surely disagree with him when he holds the British squarely responsible for the emergence of Pakistan. It is true that the canny British imperialists applied their policy of divide and rule and pitted followers of one religion against the followers of the other to rule over the undivided British India unhindered and in the manner they liked. But it is also true that there were leaders like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan -- who had helped the British during the first war of Independence (1857) and started Aligarh Movement in 1875 to motivate his co-religionists to defend the British Raj and take on the majority community - Haji Mohammad Ismail Khan (friend of Sir Syed), Nawab Viquar-ul-Mulk, Nawan Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, Aga Khan, to mention only a few, who tried their best to persuade the British to give them a separate dispensation on the ground that their community constituted a nation within a nation and that the Hindu and Muslim communities could live together under one unified system. Mohammad Ali Jinnah took the plunge much later - after 1922 when the Khilafat movement collapsed and Mahatma Gandhi befriended Ali Brothers ignoring Jinnah. Anyway, it is history.
But the fact remains that Pakistan has ceased to exist as a state and that no one is sure for how long it would survive. Paradoxically, however, there are elements in Kashmir who hail Pakistan as a "friend" of Kashmir which it is not. It is time for the people of Kashmir to consider what Dubashi and Justice Katju said about Pakistan and refashion their approach towards the "fake" country and a "non-state". |
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