Kashmiri separatists have to choose- Unsteady Pakistan or secular India

Jagan Nath Dhar  

When bifurcated in 1947, India was the per capita income of the residents of the area, then called West Pakistan, was the highest of any area of the sub-continent Of East Bengal, then called East Pakistan, the income was among the lowest. Today, the per capita income of Bangladesh is much higher than that of Pakistan.

The main reasons for this discrepancy has been that the Bangladeshi leaders did not allocate funds for spreading terrorism in their neighboring country which Pakistan did. This affected Pak fiscal stability to an extent that it had to take loans to meet the expenditure of the administration for running the government. The second reason was the Pak nation remained ruled by the military for more than half of its history. Huge sums were allocated for the development of Punjab and Sindh which sent the larger number of representatives to the Pak National assembly This affected the economic development of the other states - Baluchistan and Pakhtunkhwa. When the voice of the justified demands of these two backward provinces remained unheard, it encouraged many young persons of the two provinces to embrace terrorism.

Pakistan failed to produce progressive leaders. This encouraged the masses to take recourse to old, rigid, communal programmes at the cost of the progressive ones as the founder of the nation, Quad-e-Azam Jinnah had envisaged. This ambiance became detrimental to the progress of the country in diverse fields, including that of science, research and free thinking. While the tiny Israel produced 125 Nobel laureates, Pakistan laureates of that caliber can be counted on finger tips. Pak nationals did not hesitate in trying to shoot dead Malala Yusufzai. Her crime was that she wanted girls to be allowed to join institutions of higher learning and also study in such institutions where co-education prevailed. Malala survived the fatal attack, left the country and settled in England. She became the youngest Nobel Laureate of the world.

Still, Pakistan has not accorded recognition to her achievement. Even, now statements continue to be made that Malala is not a good Muslim. According to her critics, her desire that women too should pursue higher education and study in co-educational institutions - is against the tenets of Islam.

Usually, a country produces leaders that it deserves. While Jinnah wanted the country to be a progressive, democratic, enlightened, modern nation, his followers created conditions full of retrograde thinking. This resulted in generating a fear psychosis in the non-Muslim citizens. It also hindered the introduction of modern ideas in educational institutions.

As a result of such atmosphere, no Prime Minister of Pakistan has been able to remain in power for his/her full term. The latest, in this regard, is the instance of Imran Khan. He is a fine cricketer but a bad political leader. He helped create a condition in which the people of Pakistan used to say that he is not an elected leader but one selected by the Pak army.

During his time, Pakistan's relations with America became bitter. For decades together, the United States remained pumping billions of dollars into Pakistan to improve its economy, but Pak leaders spent a good part of those foreign funds in nurturing camps where terrorists were trained and later exported to India to destabilize the Indian economy, creating a sense of hatred among the Muslims against non-Muslims there, and against the secular and plural policies of that nation. And Imran Khan continued to adhere to this policy.

Pakistan has attained the name of the terrorist centre of the world, where the Al Qaida chief Bin Laden, also, found a safe place to live. The attack on the World Trade Center, of NewYork, was an incident conducted with his blessings When that became known to the American administration, it dispatched specially trained armed personnel to launch an attack on the residence of the Al Qaeda chief, killed him and threw his body in the open sea.

From that day onward, Pak-U.S. decades' old friendly relations received a jolt. Pakistan tried to replace America by China, to provide it the funds it needs to run the administration. China did provide some billions but that proved insufficient for Pakistan to tide over its fiscal difficulties. Pakistan approached Saudi Arabia. That country, too, helped, but the deficiency was such that Pakistan could not satisfy the rules of the International Monetary Fund so that the IMF could declare the nation a financially sound country. Economists began to call Pakistan a failed nation.

The unsteady economy and political backwardness in the country has resulted in turmoil. Many members of the Pak National Assembly and commoners asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to resign. He refused to do so. Conditions became such that it will take enough time before the country attains normalcy.

In this atmosphere, it is left to the Kashmiri separatists to consider whether their future lies better with a failed Pakistan, or plural, secular India.

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Courtesy:  Jagan Nath Dhar Editor Koshur Samachar 2022 and  April 2022, Koshur Samachar