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THE SWORD OF ISLAM

They (Muslims) were not satisfied merely with looting, they destroyed temples, they demolished idols, they raped women. The insult to other religions and the injury to humanity were unimaginable. Even when they became kings they could not liberate themselves from these loathsome desires. Even Akbar, who was famed for his tolerance, was no better than notorious emperors like Aurangzeb.
(Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, an eminent Bengali novelist, in a speech in 1926)

A history of anger and a literature of revenge divided India and created Pakistan.

On the evening of 12 January 2002, Pakistan's fourteenth head of state and third general to take over in a coup, Pervez Musharraf, appeared on television to make a much-awaited speech. The anticipation was justified. President Musharraf, addressing his nation, his neighbourhood, and the world, declared that Pakistan would no longer tolerate the extremists and terrorists who had created a "state within a state" in the country, become a law unto themselves and a threat to the world. The time had come to end their jihad. "The extremist minority must realize," he said, "that Pakistan is not responsible for waging armed jihad in the world."

"Sectarian terrorism has been going on for years," President Musharraf declared in a speech that was as courageous as candid. "Everyone is fed up of it. It is becoming unbearable. Our peace-loving people are keen to get rid of the Kalashnikov and weapon culture. Everyone is sick of it ... The day of reckoning has come. Do we want Pakistan to become a theocratic state?"

"We are conscious," he said,

"that we need to rid society of extremism and this is being done right from the beginning ... Some extremists, who are engaged in protests, are people who try to monopolise and attempt to propagate their own brand of religion. They think as if others are not Muslims. These are the people who considered the Taliban to be a symbol of Islam and that the Taliban were bringing Islamic renaissance or were practicing the purest form of Islam ... I want to ask these extremists as to who was responsible for misleading thousands of Pakistanis to their massacre in Afghanistan? (Some) mosques are being misused for propagating and inciting hatred. I would like to inform you that a number of terrorist rings have been apprehended ... The writ of the Government is being challenged. Pakistan has been made a soft state where the supremacy of law is questioned."

It could not have been easy for a President of Pakistan to make that speech. President Musharraf could have kept quiet, but he was different from his predecessors in that he was honest enough to admit that this cancer had reached the bloodstream.

How did a homeland for Muslims become a homeland for Muslim terrorists? Fundamentalists who could not capture power at the inception of Pakistan gradually created a parallel with two objectives: the indoctrination of young minds through those madrassahs that were under their control, and the declaration of jihad against a succession of enemies: India, Russia, the United States of America and, periodically, their own government. Afghanistan under the Taliban became a formal ally of this state within a state. More important and less obvious was the use they made of one government or the other for their wars. Funds came, discreetly or in the name of a higher cause like religious education, from Saudi Arabia; no one questioned where those funds went. There were other security blankets. The jihad against the Soviet Union was of course financed and armed by the West and most of the Muslim world, and resources poured into that "war are still visible in the Kalashnikov culture that President Musharraf mentioned. The United States and Britain have long distanced themselves from that jihad, but the parallel state of Pakistan continues the holy war against Russia through its support for Chechens. The jihad against America came into its own in the 1990s and was not without its friends in the Pakistan and Saudi establishments. Washington's influence has made it impossible for a contrary voice to be heard after 11 September 2001, but it cannot prevent the contrary whisper.

The Pakistan government could always be counted upon to provide support to the jihad against India, for this was its declared undeclared war. Many extremist organizations cleverly exploited this sanction to serve a larger agenda. The jihad against India, widely supported by the people and the government, became the true sustenance of the state within the state, and also a cover for terrorists who were deployed for other wars. Pakistan's anger against India is larger than the problem over Kashmir, and needs to be fully understood. A terrorist cause can always find use for an argument, and India provided one. The roots of anger run deep.

The literature of revenge raged through the second half of nineteenth century, its apex in the most literate and political city of the country, Calcutta. Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj as well as the capital of Indian intellect. One powerful strain of thought dwelt on a single question: what had gone wrong with Hindus? How had they permitted centuries of Muslim rule in Delhi and Bengal, and then become the collaborative clerks and professionals of the British, the notorious "Bengali babu"?

Who, or what, is the Bengali babu, asked a master of Bengali prose and fiction, and the most influential intellectual of that period, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-94). His answer was devastating.

Like (the god) Vishnu the babu will always lie on an eternal bed. Like Vishnu again, he will have ten incarnations: clerk, teacher, Brahmo, broker, doctor, lawyer, judge, landlord, newspaper editor and idler. Like Vishnu, in every incarnation he will destroy fearful demons. In his incarnation as a clerk, he will destroy his attendant, as a teacher he will destroy the student. as station master the ticketless traveller, as Brahmo the poor priest, as broker the English merchant, as doctor his patient, as lawyer his client, as judge the litigant, as landlord his tenants, as editor the innocent gentleman, as idler the fish in the pond ... He who has one word in his mind, which becomes ten when he speaks, hundred when he writes and thousands when he quarrels is a babu. He whose strength is one-time in his hands, ten-times in his mouth, a hundred times behind the back and absent at the time of action is a babu. He whose deity is the Englishman, preceptor the Brahmo preacher, scriptures the newspapers and pilgrimage the National Theatre is a babu. He who declares himself a Christian to missionaries, a Brahmo to Keshabchandra, a Hindu to his father and an atheist to the Brahman beggar is a babu. One who drinks water at home, alcohol at his friend's, receives abuse from the prostitute and kicks from his boss is a babu. He who hates oil when he bathes, his own fingers when he eats and his mother tongue when he speaks is indeed a babu ... O King, the people whose virtues I have recited to you will come to believe that by chewing pan (betel), lying prone on the bed, making bilingual conversation and smoking tobacco, they will reconquer India.

(This translation is from Partha Chatterjee's The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993.)

The mordant wit is brilliant; the pain of impotence palpable in the last sentence.

(c) M.J. Akbar 2002