Re: Ayub's Hatred of India

On Jun 2, 1:59 pm, Bholu <b...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Good riddance!

Ayub's hatred of India

By Kuldip Nayar

LETTER FROM NEW DELHI

I DO not know whom General Ayub hated more, the Hindus or Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto. Both come in for maximum derision in his diaries from 1966 to
1972. He suspected the bona fides of Hindus and did not believe them
to possess any worthwhile quality. In his book, Friends, Not Masters,
Ayub was contemptuous of the Hindus. But the diaries beat all earlier
references.

As for Bhutto, Ayub runs him down all the time. A typical observation
by the general after dismissing Bhutto is: "Demagogy became his
(Bhutto) stock in trade. Several warnings went unheeded. So there was
no alternative but to tell him to go. Besides, he started drinking
himself into a stupor and led a very loose life."

Ayub's notes in his diaries are like obiter dicta. He makes
pronouncements, off the cuff, without realising the effect they can
have. He has preconceived notions and interprets events and situations
accordingly. In fact, this has been the problem with military
dictators all over the world. They have a simplistic and naïve
approach to politics. For them, there are no shades, there is only
black and white, friend or foe.

The manner in which Ayub presents his views as policy statements
leaves you cold. He was the man who guided the destiny of Pakistan for
almost a decade. Some in Pakistan still remember him as the ruler who
gave them stability.

Writing on India on September 8, 1967, Ayub says, "the real trouble is
that India has no ideology (curious), this is exactly what I told
Nehru when he came to Pakistan in 1962, to act as a force for
integration and cohesion. Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence was
supplemented by Nehru's secularism and non-alignment. Both have met
their doom because how can Hindu society be turned secular and non-
belligerent? It is in any case in a shambles because of changed world
circumstances. It is now an empty slogan with no relevance to
realities."

The Pakistan high commissioner in Delhi at that time was equally out
of his depth when it came to analysing the Indian political scene. He
said in a dispatch which Ayub quotes: "The rightists and Hindu bigots,
all parties, are getting together. Chances are that they will throw
out Indira (Mrs Indira Gandhi) and put a man like (Y.B.) Chavan in her
place. The anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim feelings will grow. They will
seek to undo Pakistan and settle Kashmir by military means. So,
security problems will assume much more serious dimensions as turmoil
and instability increases in India and bigoted and narrow-minded
Hindus assume power."

Ayub quotes in his support one Dr Berg, the head of a German TV
organisation, as saying: "Nehru is largely to blame for India's
misfortune. He ruled India as a private property, history will never
forgive him for not coming to terms with Pakistan and even China. Any
chance for revival of India is out of the question."

Perhaps, these kinds of analyses have been the bane of Pakistan's
jaundiced policy on India. Islamabad depended on some nitwit and the
clueless high commission which collected yarns and passed them on as
the thinking in the country. That is why Islamabad lived in a make-
believe world as far as India was concerned and seldom differentiated
between facts and bazaar gossip.

I believe there is a better appreciation of the situation in India now
than before. In fact, it has been so for the past few years. A
democratic society may look chaotic and disorderly and, for that
matter, every developing democratic polity is so in a way.
Institutions are the backbone of a democratic structure, not a set of
rules or stern warnings.

Ayub believed that India would fall apart. The same view was aired by
his son Gohar Ayub as far back as 1984, when I met him at Abbottabad,
nearly 18 years after his father's foreboding. Gohar said that
Pakistan was waiting for India to disintegrate into six parts before
holding any serious talks with it. The basic unity of India remains
intact.

A country like Pakistan which has been ruled by the military for more
than three decades has developed a different kind of ethos. It does
not mean that people have ceased to believe in democracy. It means
that they have come to reconcile themselves to a situation which they
believe they cannot change. It is an act of resignation, not
renunciation.

That is the reason you see at times a glimpse of the fire burning
within people's hearts. The lawyers' movement over the suspension of
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry indicates that unquenchable spirit.
Man, however long he remains shackled, asserts himself in one way or
the other.

India itself lost democracy for nearly two years, from 1975 to 1977,
when the emergency was imposed. Dissent was smothered, the press
gagged and arbitrary arrests were made in the thousands. A nation
inured to free, democratic living was initially in a state of shock,
unable to realise the directions and implications of actions by the
government and its functionaries. The rulers did not assess the
people's anger. When it came to assertion, even Mrs Gandhi, the
architect of the emergency, was defeated at the polls.

Ayub also did not appreciate the volcano rumbling in East Pakistan.
Instead, he had contempt for its people and all those who wanted to
rule themselves. This is what he wrote on August 14, a few months
before Bangladesh liberated itself. "Today is the 27th anniversary of
Pakistan. Normally it should be a day of rejoicing but I wonder how
many people feel that way. The idea that had brought Pakistan into
being can never lose validity, but its spirit has lost attraction,
certainly for the generation below the age of 30 who form the bulk of
the population. Regionalism and provincialism has supplanted it,
specially so in East Pakistan. We have no constitution and there is no
consensus as to what it should be like. East Pakistan is on the point
of breaking off. What will happen in

West Pakistan remains to be seen."

Ayub's panacea like that of any dictator was the use of force. He
said: "The only binding force left is the army. It has the formidable
task of holding the country together and meeting the threat of Indian
aggression, which is getting ever louder and provocative."

No wonder, President Pervez Musharraf believes that he is providing
cohesion and order to Pakistan as he goes on justifying the parallel
rally against the lawyers and their supporters in Karachi the other
day. Certain things are simply not defendable.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

Does it occur to you that use of extreme force in E. Pak would have
succeeded, had India not intervened? The blueprints were all ready.
They
would have expelled or killed or converted the Hindus and Buddhists,
killed the trouble elements in Bengal, raped women to produce a new
breed permanently loyal to West Pak.

India should not ever expect to hear any complimentary words from
Pakistan, or from any other Islamic nation. There are a few
perpetual afecionados of Nehru who credit him with "saving" democracy
(as if that is a reward in itself), but the facts are that Nehru
committed
very serious blunders at the onset, such as not solving the Kashmir
problem
for ever, by letting Indian troops occupy all Kashmir. Not only he did
not do that,
but on the other hand internationalized it by taking it to UN.

Howsoever much we Indians might pat ourselves on the back, the bloody
culmination of 1962 war is evidence of serious dereliction of duty by
Nehru. Even
more shameful was how his cronies, no doubt at his behest, tried to
shift blame. The Henderson-Brooks was suppressed, and Menon was
made the scapegoat. The effects of the utter lack of military
preparedness showed even in the 1966 war. It was only the decisive
roles of Shastri and the then military leaders that saved the day.

P.S. (1) Read the shameful message by Nehru to the citizens
of Tezpur, when it seemed the Chinese would occupy it
the very next day. He was abandoning them to their fate.

(2) Gleanings from the Henderson-Brookes report are available
on the web. The writer is Neville-Maxwell.



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