Ahsan Iqbal is a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly and a former minister. He has written an article titled ‘A breakthrough path’ published in the prominent Pakistani newspaper ‘News International’, in which he has proposed a solution to Pakistan’s huge problems, but which in fact only reveals his own fatuity and superficial understanding of political and economic realities.
In this article he writes “Pakistan’s problems are structural and institutional. They have become deeper, but so has mistrust among various stakeholders. We urgently need institutional reforms. Our enemy is not outside, we have inflicted much of the damage through our own chequered history."
His solution is for politicians, civil servants, military, judiciary, media, and private sector representatives to sit together and chalk out a roadmap for national transformation and development. He has suggested that the Chairman of Pakistan’s Senate and Speaker of the National Assembly should co-host a National Dialogue of all national stake holders—heads of political parties, service chiefs, civil servants, Chief Justice of Pakistan and other Judges, Pakistan Bar Council, media etc to formulate a 10 year (2020-2030) National Charter for Implementation of the Constitution (NCIC) to deal with political, economic, judicial and security issues.
I regret to say that by this grandiloquent, fustian and high sounding plan Ahsan Iqbal has only disclosed his own inanity and superficiality. So let me explain.
As mentioned in my article ‘Was Jinnah right about the 2 nation theory’ published in nayadaur.tv, this world really consists of two worlds, the world of the developed highly industrialised countries (North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and China), and the world of the underdeveloped countries (which include India and Pakistan). There is a secret unwritten understanding among the developed countries that the Indian subcontinent must never be allowed to unite and emerge as a modern industrial giant, like China (of which it has all the potential), and to prevent this they will do their level best.
Will the developed countries allow their industries to close down, causing millions of their workers to become unemployed? No, they will oppose it tooth and nail. And how will they do that? By making people of the Indian subcontinent fight each other in the name of religion, caste, language, race, region etc. And in view of our tremendous diversity it is easy for them to do so, using their local agents (as they used their agents Gandhi and Jinnah).
So it is silly and superficial to think that Pakistan’s (and India’s) problems can be solved by institutional or structural reforms. They can only be solved by a mighty, united, people’s Revolution.
The first step in this direction must be to patiently explain to the people of the Indian subcontinent that unless we become highly industrialised like Western nations we will remain condemned to massive poverty, unemployment, child malnourishment, lack of proper healthcare and good education for our masses etc, that this historical transformation can only be achieved if despite our diversity we unite and wage a mighty historical struggle for transforming India into a highly industrialised country. And that those vested interests seeking to divide us by inciting religious, caste, racial, lingual and regional hatred among us are our greatest enemies and must be exposed.
We must also explain that Partition of 1947 was a historical British swindle, that its basis, the two nation theory was bogus, that India and Pakistan (and Bangladesh) are really one nation, sharing the same culture, and were one since Mughal times, that there was no communal problem before 1857 and it was artificially created by the British thereafter.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect Naya Daur Media's editorial policy.