Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans

When our victory is ultimately won,

It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight

And their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite

Let’s be meek to them –

And turn the other cheek to them

And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.

Let’s give them full air parity –

And treat the rats with charity,

But don’t let’s be beastly to the Hun.

                                                                Song by Noel Coward (1944)

AROUND the time, Noel Coward parodied the excessive humanitarianism of a small minority of Britons and incurred the displeasure of the BBC for doing so, a furious controversy erupted over a film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, by Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell. The film centred on the life of a fictional General Clive ‘Sugar’ Wynee-Candy, once a dashing soldier who had won the Victoria Cross, who in his twilight years found it increasingly difficult to reconcile his archaic sense of military honour with the imperatives of the ongoing ‘total war’. What irked critics was the depiction of the General’s deep and abiding friendship with Kretschmar-Schuldorf, a Prussian officer of the Kaiser’s army in World War I, who fled Germany after the Nazis took over and lived as an alien émigré in England. Compared to the well-meaning but blundering General ‘Sugar’ Candy, the Prussian came across as cool, dignified, compassionate, charming and unflappable – the epitome of what was later to be caricatured as the Good German.

Winston Churchill was deeply disturbed by what he thought was the namby-pamby message of Colonel Blimp and wanted the film banned. His concern with the sympathetic portrayal of the enemy was echoed by a large number of British nationalists. In a pamphlet, The Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp by E.W and M.M. Robson of the right-wing Sidneyan Society, the film was described as ‘one of the most wicked’ films made in Britain.

‘In this long three-hour mess-up of a film,’ wrote the Robsons, ‘you will gain a good idea of how World War I led to World War II… How is it that when we had victory utter and complete in 1918, with the Germans at our mercy, how is it that though we had determined there would be no more war, we allowed victory to elude us, the Germans to fool and hypnotise us, so that we have to fight them all over again? When you have looked at, and pondered well, the phenomenon of ‘Blimp’ appearing during the Second War against the Germans, the answer to that will be easy…’

 

Drawing analogies from another country whose mental make-up may be different and another period of history may not always be appropriate. However, there is an astonishing sense of déjà vu that confronts any, even half-detached, observer of the post-26/11 mood in India. After the attack on Parliament seven years ago, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee spoke of an aar paar ki ladai with Pakistan and ordered full military mobilization along the western border. This time the official sabre-rattling has been relatively subdued and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that war is not an option.

But the government’s regulated show of displeasure has been overtaken by visceral public anger at Pakistan. With a populist media leading the way in sponsoring civil society’s rage against terrorism, yesterday’s candles of sadbhavna have been snuffed out by the new torches of assertive nationalism. On paper there are ‘peace’ marches being staged all over India; in reality these have turned out to be fulminations against both a hostile neighbour and national impotence. The politicians, or so it is being said, have emasculated India; it is time to generate a national resolve that won’t stomach this nonsense any more.

 

One of the main casualties of this national anger is the belief, nurtured assiduously ever since Operation Parakram turned out to be a phoney war, that Pakistan and India have a common destiny. The groundwork for this sadbhavna had been made by an elaborate people-to-people contact between the two countries, not to mention the countless cricket matches, media links and cultural exchanges. Even after the train blasts in Mumbai that claimed some 250 lives, it was possible for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to claim at the Havana summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in September 2006 that both India and Pakistan were co-victims of terrorism – a formulation that was interpreted by some to be an expression of Hindu ‘dhimmi’tude.

Only a week or so before the Mumbai attack, President Asif Ali Zardari repeated a formulation first made by L.K. Advani during his controversial visit to Pakistan in mid-2005, that there was a part of Pakistan that was forever Indian and vice versa. Zardari’s show of bonhomie didn’t provoke any adverse comment despite the conviction in Indian official circles that the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul was the handiwork of the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan. Indeed, it produced a flurry of punditry suggesting that the best bet for peace was a Zardari-led Pakistan.

In hindsight, there were two factors that kept Indo-Pakistan relations on an even keel for the past five years, despite the menace of terrorism. The first – which took shape after Pervez Musharraf lowered the scale of jihadi infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir after 2004 – was the disconcerting but nevertheless real perception in India that Islamist terrorism in India had acquired a momentum of its own and had become home-grown. Therefore, while ‘elements in Pakistan’ may have provided the technical know-how and even organized some funding, the jihadi mindset had also struck roots in a small minority of Indian Muslims. The implications were obvious: India could no longer just blame the ISI; it had to look within and confront the issue politically.

 

Consequently, the emphasis of state counter-terrorism shifted from Pakistan-bashing to mobilizing representative bodies of Indian Muslims such as the Darul Uloom in Deoband and the Jamaat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind to speak out against terrorism and jihadi organizations such as the Students Islamic Movement and Indian Mujahedeen. The approach was complemented by the hyper-activity in the Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad to prosecute a network of ‘Hindu terrorists’, allegedly involved in retaliatory violence in Malegaon. The big political idea behind three weeks of incessant media leaks was to demonstrate to Muslims that the Indian state was even-handed in its bid to contain terrorism and that Muslims weren’t being singled out on account of their faith.

The second parallel development was the democracy movement that led to the ouster of President Pervez Musharraf and the election of a Pakistan People’s Party-led federal government in Pakistan. The revival of democracy had a euphoric effect and bolstered Pakistan’s sagging self-esteem. The articulate Pakistani elite, particularly those with connections in London, Washington DC and, by implication, New Delhi, made a persuasive case for the world to be generous towards Pakistan and allow democracy to undercut religious bigotry. ‘Give democracy in Pakistan a chance’ was an appeal that resonated throughout the democratic world and put a gag on those who insisted that Pakistan was doomed to remain an ugly carbuncle on the face of the earth.

 

Particular mention must be made of India’s reading of President Zardari. At one level, there was a feeling that yesterday’s Mr Ten Percent was merely a passing show and that sooner or later the Pakistan Army would put this dilettante politician in his place. However, this was tempered by the belief that despite his known shortcomings and lack of political experience, Zardari was sincere in his opposition to jihadi terror, not least because it had affected his family directly. Equally, it was felt that Zardari had come to the helm without carrying any of the Kashmir baggage that has burdened the Pakistani establishment. Taken together, it implied that India must take advantage of Zardari’s tenure to elevate bilateral relations to a higher plane. Such a process, it was felt, would add weight to the forces of democracy within Pakistan and help put the military in its place.

Ever since the West threw its weight behind the peace process, the strategic community in India has been divided between those anxious to discover the ‘good’ Pakistani in a turbulent country and those who believed that, at the end of the day, Pakistan was inherently ‘bad’. That there was a section in Pakistan disgusted by the drift to extremism and anxious to rekindle Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s vision of a modern Muslim (as opposed to Islamic) country, was not in doubt. But was the strategic weight of this enlightened section akin to the so-called ‘good Germans’ during World War II? Were they consequential enough to impose correctives on state policy? Or were they the ‘useful idiots’ who were expediently wheeled out during moments of international exasperation to tell the world that ordinary Pakistanis were devoid of culpability and that the crimes were always the responsibility of someone else?

The issue has come to a head in the aftermath of the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. I have heard liberal Pakistanis insist that ordinary people in their country were as shocked and as outraged as Indians at the brutality of the terrorists. They have also suggested in private that President Zardari would like nothing better than to banish every jihadi mullah to a Guantanamo Bay. It has even been whispered that the Pakistan President had discreetly instructed his Ambassador to the United Nations – who happened to be his personal appointee – to ensure there were no obstacles in the path of the Security Council resolution outlawing the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. He apparently wanted to use the UNSC decision to force the pace of anti-jihadi action within Pakistan. It’s a different matter that after the international ban the local crackdown in Pakistan appears to be cosmetic.

 

Without discounting the veracity of what liberal Pakistanis claim or the importance of some investigations by the Pakistani media, some questions come to mind. Why has the Government of Pakistan, in particular the suave prime minister and foreign minister, been so squeamish in admitting that the attack on Mumbai was a commando operation organised from Pakistan by Pakistanis? Why has the Pakistan government taken it upon itself to equate the murderous actions of ‘non-state players’ with the sovereignty and national honour of Pakistan? Why did the civilian government do a complete U-turn on the ISI chief’s visit to Delhi to see the evidence?

It is fair to say that just as the world was extremely generous in extending a helping hand to a fledgling democracy in Pakistan, it expected a democratic government to be far more responsive in attending to the security concerns of the world. There was never any suggestion that either President Zardari or any of the late Benazir Bhutto’s friends who occupy high office in Pakistan were in any way directly responsible for either the Mumbai attack or the Kabul bombing in September. The finger of suspicion was always pointed at jihadi groups working, presumably, at the behest of the ISI.

 

The feeling that it was fast emerging as the new epicentre of global terrorism and threatening the security of countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Britain and India, should have been the occasion for a new churning in Pakistan. It should have offended the self-respect of Pakistani elite at least to hear former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright describe their country as a ‘migraine’ and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggest that three-quarters of major terrorist plots targeting the UK have their genesis in Pakistan. Yet, there have been no voices of consequence from within Pakistan willing to tell the political and military establishment that enough is enough and that it is time to flush out the jihadis and the rogues who run them. All we heard was talk about making steady, incremental gains in the fight against the fanatics. Like the Good German, the Good Pakistani has couched his acquiescence in either silence or sophistry.

 

Actually it is the sophistry that tells the tale of denial and justification. As the horror of the Mumbai carnage unfolded, there were many intellectuals from the South Asian diaspora eager to shed tears for a Bombay they imagined had perished in the fires at the Taj. They filled up many column inches of the iconic liberal publications such as The New York Times and Guardian. Some were notionally Indians or Pakistanis and a few imagined they originated from a mythical entity called South Asia. Curiously, their remorse was never unqualified; it was invariably couched with gratuitous references to how badly India treats its Muslim minority, how the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots have kindled a desire for revenge, and how Kashmir remains the core issue between two fractious neighbours. Cut out the academic verbiage, the mandatory allusions to the Sea Lounge at the Taj and the tributes to the energy of Bollywood, and you are left with the stark judgment: India had it coming.

The Good German claimed complete ignorance of the concentration camps. The Good Pakistani is infinitely better informed. He has seen the horrific destruction of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad; he has watched the siege of the Lal Masjid; and he has experienced the growing hold of religious bigots on society. He knows that Pakistan is sleep-walking its way to absolute disaster. Yet, when it comes to India, ordinary decencies give way to historical memory and the brusque indictment: you had it coming.

Nothing lasts in India, least of all hatred. In months to come, the tragedy of 26/11 will be subsumed by the rhetoric of competitive politics. The pragmatists will duly inform us that we can’t choose our neighbours and alter geography; the world community will remind us that the alternative to peaceful co-existence is mutually assured destruction with nuclear weapons; and the cricket administrators will underline the high costs of not allowing normalcy to return. The world community will no doubt praise India for its exemplary sense of restraint; and Washington DC and London will assure New Delhi that they will do their utmost to rein in the rogues in Pakistan, without undermining the Good Pakistanis.

 

It’s an old story we’ve heard before and will continue to hear as we continue to count the bodies. But this time the cost of ineffective fulmination may be higher. In 2001, Afghanistan was the terrorist Disneyland, the place from which assorted jihadis fanned out; in 2008, the epicentre of global terrorism has come nearer to our doorstep – to Pakistan. In 2001, India was singed; now it is being burnt by terror.

Earlier, the Good Pakistani was a social distraction, an embellishment of our secularism. Today, he has become a red herring and a wilful diversion from the urgent business of confronting the threat frontally. With infinite patience India tried for long to not be ‘beastly’ to the Good Pakistani; he was, after all, also ‘one of us’. Unfortunately, it’s been a dodgy investment. When we called in our IOUs, the Good Pakistani melted into the crowd; he became just another Pakistani. When it came to the crunch, the Good Pakistani chose Bad Pakistan.