Jinnah put pakistan in Americas lap in service of imperialism --------------------------------------------------------------- omar ali, in his review of Saadia Toors book Culture and Cold War politics in Pakistan brings out how Jinnah and pakistans bureaucracy at partition offered pakistans services to American imperialism. 3quarksdaily/3quarksdaily/2012/05/saadia-toor-and-the-state-of-islam.html This cold war lens also caused the US to look kindly upon the military-bureaucratic elite in Pakistan and to encourage it to suppress every mass movement that arose in the country. These cold war priorities also caused the US to look the other way during massacres in Bangladesh in 1971 and to contemplate intervening on Pakistan’s side in its war with India. But Ms Toor presents this history with the emphasis entirely on US machinations, as if its collaborators in Pakistan had no ambitions, needs or plans of their own. In actual fact, the military bureaucratic elite in Pakistan figured out very early that US assistance could be arranged if they were seen to be fighting the demon of communism and they made sure the US embassy was always aware of the communist threat and their heroic (and expensive) efforts to combat this threat. Jinnah himself was not blind to the possibilities and dangled the anti-communist bait in front of every interested Western visitor. The following account is from a book by Margaret Bourke-White and I am quoting at some length because I think it is remarkably prescient about many things: ..(Jinnah said) Of course it will be a democratic constitution; Islam is a democratic religion. I ventured to suggest that the term democracy was often loosely used these days. Could he define what he had in mind? Democracy is not just a new thing we are learning, said Jinnah. It is in our blood. We have always had our system of zakat -- our obligation to the poor. This confusion of democracy with charity troubled me. I begged him to be more specific. Our Islamic ideas have been based on democracy and social justice since the thirteenth century. This mention of the thirteenth century troubled me still more. Pakistan has other relics of the Middle Ages besides social justice -- the remnants of a feudal land system, for one. What would the new constitution do about that? .. The land belongs to the God, says the Koran. This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the true Islamic principles one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nations laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy. What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America? America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America, was Jinnahs reply. Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed -- he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles -- the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves. He leaned toward me, dropping his voice to a confidential note. Russia, confided Mr. Jinnah, is not so very far away. This had a familiar ring. In Jinnahs mind this brave new nation had no other claim on American friendship than this - that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the BoIsheviks. I wondered whether the Quaid-i-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers. He was stressing Americas military interest in other parts of the world. America is now awakened, he said with a satisfied smile. Since the United States was now bolstering up Greece and Turkey, she should be much more interested in pouring money and arms into Pakistan. If Russia walks in here, he concluded, the whole world is menaced. This trend to ask for American money in the name of fighting communism continued and intensified as time went on. The US was happy to oblige and used its resources to promote such thinking, but the attraction was mutual and highly profitable for the Pakistani elite. iref.homestead/Messiah.html
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 08:40:48 +0000