Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is a perfect manifestation of what’s wrong with his country today. A leader who was in his youth known as much for his cricketing exploits on field as for off-the-field glamorous lifestyle, is today the brand ambassador of the Taliban. Last year, he infamously called Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden a “martyr”, a statement which his Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi preferred to duck in a recent interview to an Afghan TV channel, saying the PM was quoted “well, uh, again, out of context”. When the journalist persisted with the question: “Is he (Osama bin Laden) a martyr? You disagree (with Imran Khan)? On Osama bin Laden?” Qureshi said, “I will let that pass.” How can a minister go against his own master?
If in 2020 he called Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11 terror attacks in the US in 2001, a ‘martyr’ while addressing the country’s parliament, the National Assembly, this year, he blamed women for the rising sexual violence in Pakistan. In an interview, which aired on 20 June, the Pakistan PM said, “If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the man unless they are robots. It’s common sense.” Blaming “fahashi” (vulgarity) for the rise of rape and sexual violence in the country, he invoked the importance of religion and the concept of ‘purdah’ in Islam. It is to remove “temptation” from society because “not everyone has willpower”, he emphasised.
Interestingly, and of course ironically, the same Imran Khan, according to his biographer Christopher Sandford, was in his youth known for his popularity among women and his frequenting of night clubs. Sandford writes in his book, Imran Khan: The Cricketer, The Celebrity, The Politician, that Imran Khan visited all the famous nightclubs in the UK and Australia, and would love to meet and court women. He would not drink alcohol, but wouldn’t have a problem with others doing the same.
Unfortunately, for Pakistan, this has been its tragedy all through its brief history as a nation-state. It got leaders who were overtly non-religious but never dithered in using the worst form fundamentalism for benefits, personal or otherwise. Just look at Mohammed Ali Jinnah: He used to drink alcohol, eat pork, smoke 50 cigarettes a day, and dress like an English gentleman. Yet, it was he who created Pakistan in the name of Islam! In the early 1970s, it was a socialist in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who introduced radical Islam in the country—a trend which gained momentum under Gen Zia-ul-Haq. Then there was Benazir Bhutto, one of the most ‘liberal’ Prime Ministers in the history of Pakistan, who presided over the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan. Gen Pervez Musharraf “did not blanch at whiskey, danced when the mood was upon him”, as Steve Coll describes him in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Ghost Wars, and yet he believed firmly in the necessity of the Taliban.
So, what does this phenomenon tell India and Indians, who would historically go weak-kneed whenever a “democratically elected” government comes to power in Pakistan—till the Modi government decided to give it up after the Uri and Pathankot attacks? We would be told by our peaceniks and so-called experts to reach out to the newly elected rulers of Pakistan, to make a grand concessionary gesture to help strengthen their hold in the fledgling democratic setup. This explains some of our excessively indulgent moves—from the one-sided concessions being granted by Mrs Indira Gandhi to Zulfikar Bhutto, to Atal Bihari Vajpayee making an earnest but naïve peace overtures to Islamabad via the Lahore bus diplomacy, which ironically ended up at the treacherous Kargil heights at the loss of hundreds of young soldiers.
As the transformation of Imran Khan from a suave, charismatic playboy to a hardened Islamist—and also other Pakistan leaders in the past from Jinnah to Nawaz Sharif—suggests, secularism and liberal values are sacrificed first at the altar of power in Islamabad. Anyone ruling that country will have to seek legitimacy from Islam and Islamists, especially those who are seen as suspects. And this, unfortunately, may be the reason why there may not be any redemption for democracy in our immediate western neighbourhood in the near future at least. And so is the case with good neighbourly relations with India.
In fact, India must be prepared for a perpetual state of warfare, overt or covert, with Pakistan, for its very raison d’etre is based on anti-India sentiments. It sees its existence as a state constantly in fight with India. Pakistan sees itself as an antithesis to the very idea of India, which invariably threatens the ‘3Ms’ that define Pakistan—Mullah, Military and Militant. Imran Khan is just a symptom. The real problem is the idea of Pakistan.