Separated at birth, India shines & Pakistan ebbs in darkness of martial theology
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, August 13: Seventy five years after the partition, India is steadying Sri Lanka with almost USD 4 billion credit line, while Pakistan is knocking at the doors of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and China with begging bowls for bailout package to avert a certain financial collapse.
Religion is indeed a convenient tool for the political expediency.
Muhammed Ali Jinnah was just another bright barrister in the Indian politics till the early years of 1930 when he was coopted by the political Islamic movement to become the face of the campaign for a new nation.
The Congress had many extraordinary Muslim leaders who drew universal followings for their oratory and vision.
But bigotry always gains crowd.
India by late 1930s had plunged into communal arson, as the votaries of Pakistan ferociously spewed venom among the Muslims. Rest is history.
Pakistan, true to the sense of disbelief in the survival of political Islamic movement for a separate nation, proudly accepted one-third of the Indian military even while it just had about 16 per cent of the total population.
Worst, Pakistan movement was funded and sponsored by Zamindars in Punjab and Bengal. They had been wary that the Congress swearing by the liberal and socialist values wouldn’t let them perpetuate the 19th century lordship over the people.
They were proven right, as Indian soon embarked on land reforms and abolished Zamindari (1951) and also the princely states.
Such Zamindars struck an alliance of survival with the powerful elites in the military in Pakistan, and helped seed a state based on martial theology. Mullahs dictated the social orders. Men of Uniform ran businesses. Zamindars usurped politics.
The troika served Pakistan with the cocktail of an Islamic State that was always in existential crisis.
After 75 years, the ruling elites from the troika have ensured that almost 20 per cent of Pakistan’s foreign debt is accounted by China.
They also ensured that Pakistan remains in the league of the countries bailed out by the International Monetary Fund most of the times.
In this Pakistan and Sri Lanka share similar destiny, with the commonality being the rampant bribery among the ruling elites, which has been exploited by the foreign powers.
In 75 years, India has business houses which individually has assets that a large section of the Pakistani economy collectively may not match.
Indeed, Pakistan acquired an Islamic nuclear bomb, with suspect source of the know-how.
A wheat eating nation, Pakistan will soon plunge in sever food crisis, as the climate change makes the crop its first visible victim. The wheat production in Pakistan is slated to slump by at least 20 per cent.
Barring 1962 Chinese invasions, India has won all the wars. Pakistan has lost all the wars, besides splitting into two parts and the adhesive of political Islam failing to stop Bangladesh from coming to existence.
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was laying the foundation of a new India with technical institutions, while Pakistani founders were busy growing bears of the Mullahs.
Now, India leaves its footprints in space, and Pakistan allows China to eat into its space.
Even a century later since its formation, the destiny of Pakistan will continue to be written at the whips and fancies smoking cigar in Rawalpindi.
After 75 years of India’s Independence, Droupadi Murmu, who struggled in her youth to support her children, is President, while becoming the symbol of the prowess of democracy.
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