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Hi Pervaiz,
I am forwarding to you this recent article on "Obama's
Great Illusion" by the well known British journalist Yvonne Ridley. It is
highly relevant to the current Family of the Heart's debate about Maulana
Abdul Kalam Azad: The Man Who Knew the Future of Pakistan Before its
Creation.
Among other things, Ridley's engaging article exposes the
true nature of the Pakistani ruling elite (an unholy alliance between
feudal landlords and a thoroughly corrupt army), which has "succeeded" to
reduce Pakistan to a "state for sale"...and not necessarily to the highest
bidder, and whose main "achievement" has been to oppress, exploit, and
terrorize the very people it is supposed to protect and/or defend.
Tragically, the creation of Pakistan proved to be a great
disaster, not only for the people of Pakistan ( who have suffered the
most), but also for the entire world of Islam. The Indian Muslims who
fought heroically for the liberation of India from British colonialism,
were "awarded" with the creation of a state which has been used, from its
very conception, to serve the strategic interests of British and American
imperialism, and inflamed Hindu bigotry against Islam and Muslims in
general, and against Indian Muslims in particular. Indian Muslims were
transformed from the "liberators" of India into the "enemy within," and
Hindu nationalism has been defined, ever since the creation of Pakistan as
a so-called "Muslim state," by the intensity of Hindu hostility towards
Islam and Muslims.
Equally important is the fact that, as it stands now, the
state of Pakistan has failed in four fundamental areas, namely: (1)
failure to maintain its national unity, as manifested in the creation of
Bangladesh and the mounting ethnic tensions that challenge the very
integrity of the present state of Pakistan; (2) failure to put an end to
the feudal system which kept the vast majority of Pakistanis in a state of
"bondage" to the dominant "families" whose affinity has always been far
stronger towards the former British colonial power and way of life than
towards their own people; (3) failure to eliminate illiteracy, more than
50% of Pakistanis are still illiterate after well over 60 years of
so-called "national independence, and in spite of the fact that the first
revealed word in the Qur'an, Islam's Holy Book, is "IQRA" or READ; and (4)
failure to establish a modern, progressive, democratic, and egalitarian
state capable of alleviating, indeed eliminating, poverty and living up to
its Islamic ideals of social justice, freedom, and self-respect. How could
any person be proud of a country in which the former Mr. Ten
Percent (i.e. Asif Zardari) has been elevated to the status of Mr. One
Hundred Percent, i.e., the Head of State? Similar to the essentially
tribal elite of Saudi Arabia which uses Islam, conveniently, to gain
legitimacy, the ruling elite of Pakistan also uses Islam as "a marriage of
convenience."
Within this context, it was the brilliant Pakistani
economist Ishrat Husain, author of the splendid book Pakistan: The Economy
of an Elitist Stat (Oxford University Press, 1999), who proposes that
Pakistan has experienced an "elitist growth model," which he identifies as
combining a powerful leader or succession of leaders operating without
checks and balances, a bureaucratic class that unquestioningly implements
the wishes of the leader, and a passive and subservient population. He
also argues that "failure of governance and the consistent domination of
political power and state apparatus by a narrowly based elite seeking to
advance private and family interests to the exclusion of the majority of
the population lies at the root of the problem." That was true in the last
half of the 20th Century and is still true during the first decade of the
21st Century.
Yvonne Ridley's article, together with the insightful
analysis of Ishrat Husain should give food of thought to those who care
about the present as well as the future of Pakistan, including members of
the Family of the Heart.
Regards & Eid Mubarak,
Ibrahim Hayani
Professor of Economics, Ryerson University
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