Bhopinder Singh | Why it’s crucial to call out all those who may be violating norms

The foreboding (in hindsight) but initially unquestioned signs in the early years of Gen. Zia-ul Haq’s military dictatorship in Pakistan are a case in point. After perfunctorily promising to uphold democracy and the spirit of the Pakistani constitution, he subsequently scripted a starkly different narrative. The reimagining of history started surreptitiously with reinterpreting words and the order of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s national motto — unity (ittehad), faith (yaqeen), order (nazm). The religiously-motivated Gen. Zia was to slip in subtle changes with rearranging the order as per his envisaged priorities — faith, unity, order.

Historians insist that Jinnah’s faith, or “yaqueen”, pertained to the “Idea of Pakistan”, whereas Gen. Zia reinterpreted it in terms of religious faith, as is the norm in any majoritarian or puritanical regime.

Soon, even the relatively liberal institution of the Pakistan Army changed from a fairly standardised motto of “Unity, Faith, Discipline” to a more religiously charged “Iman (Faith), Taqwa (Piety) and Jihad fi Sabilillah (Holy war in the path of Allah)”. Reflectively, this would ordain the Pakistan Army to wage “holy war in the path of Allah” (as also claimed by religious extremists and terrorists), and not just towards its constitutional and restricted task of protecting the country’s territorial integrity. What could be seen to be semantic nitpicking often metastasizes into legitimising religiosity and revisionism — the terrible consequences of Gen. Zia’s dark years of inserting his exclusionary and partisan agenda still play out in Pakistan today, and it is a genie, that once unleashed, is very difficult to put back in the bottle.

A similar case of skewed semantics that were inherently incendiary was when then US President George W. Bush had, in his “war on terror” speech soon after the 9/11 attacks, invoked the “crusades” to contextualise his war on terror. The Middle East region recalls the indelicate gaffe of “crusades” as wars waged by the Christian West against Arab Muslims to capture the holy land from Muslims. Further allusion to the war as “a civilisational fight” had shades of Samuel P. Huntington’s clash of civilisations narrative that “others” the Middle East as barbaric, violent and backward, while conveniently short-changing the murky and manipulative past of the “West” in conjuring such a situation, in the first place. The political legitimising of such entitled Orientalism has been perfected to an art by the even more divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump, and that does not augur well for trust or heal. However, American society and the media is still fiercely independent and open to questioning the “powers that be” whenever they feel that the leadership is sanctifying a spirit that diminishes its hallowed constitutional values.

It is with this backdrop that three recent instances of possible partisanship afflicting the spine of India — the supposedly apolitical institutions of the bureaucracy, judiciary and the armed forces, has raised eyebrows. Recently, some bureaucrats from a southern state felt emboldened enough to start a WhatsApp group, incredulously called “Mallu Hindu Officers”, suggesting a religion-based criteria for a service that is ostensibly above such divides. While they were called out by the state government for behaving in a manner unbefitting a government official, the deafening silence in the rest of the country was telling, for had the derelict officers belonged to a “othered” community and dared to do such an exclusivist and repulsive action, perhaps the reaction would have been more dramatic.

Similarly, a high court judge risked public trust in the judiciary by making certain statements supporting Uniform Civil Code and allegedly made brazen and unrestrained remarks about a minority community. While he too was ultimately pulled up by the Supreme Court, this was only after he was afforded “cover fire” by the chief minister of the same state with the statement: “Those who speak truth are threatened with impeachment”. While politicians do what they do best to sully the environment with partisan or exclusionary goads, the succumbing of those who are expected to maintain constitutional impartiality is quite disconcerting.

Even the “sword arm of the nation” had its own unsavoury moment when a painting from the office of its Chief (pertaining to India’s finest military victory in the India-Pakistan War of 1971) was replaced by “Karam Kshetra” (field of deeds) with images of Chanakya, Garuda and a depiction of Krishna driving Arjuna’s chariot from the Mahabharata, juxtaposed with modern military capabilities. It could have been a storm in a teacup in the sense that the paintings of the walls ought not to define the culture or ethos of an institution necessarily — but it would be equally naïve to assume that it has no relevance to the preferred political winds. The recent backdrop and events that led up to such questions are pertinent to introspect if indeed there is revisionism and a slide across all institutions of checks or balances, under the partisan garb of “correcting” history. After all, questioning can often be the most patriotic thing to do.