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A visiting word in the ear for
India
By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - India welcomes all, particularly those who come
from a hostile Pakistan seeking peace and normalization
of relations, regardless of their personal ideology or
political affiliation. A few months ago it was Maulana
Fazlur Rehman, the Muslim  fundamentalist whose
seminaries helped produce the Taliban. Now it's the turn
of Sherry Rehman, a liberal journalist-turned
politician, feisty feminist and a peace activist, and no
relation to the equally feisty cleric. Both visitors
have been accorded a warm welcome by all, the common
people, the intelligentsia, politicians and the media.
Like the Maulana (an honorific for religious
figures), Sherry, too, is a member of Pakistan's
national assembly. But apart from sharing a surname,
they have little in common. Indeed, no two more
contrasting figures could be imagined in Pakistan
politics. Sherry belongs to the liberal left-of-center
Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) led by
self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. She
heads the women's parliamentary group, which has nearly
as many members as the opposition Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six religious
parties, and contains a number of gutsy women who are
determined to seek justice for their gender.
Interestingly, this group includes Raheel Qazi, the
daughter of prominent religious fundamentalist leader
Qazi Hussain Ahmad of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a rival of
Maulana Rehman for the leadership of the MMA.
The Maulana is considered the chief patron of
Pakistan's Muslim fundamentalists. He is also known as
the "Father of the Taliban" and supporter of Osama bin
Laden. He is the head of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI)
and leader of the MMA, which holds 20 percent of the
seats in the national assembly and runs the provincial
government of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) as a
majority and Balochistan as a coalition partner. NWFP is
the home of Pashtuns, the ethnic group to which both the
former rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban and the
current Afghan President Hamid Karzai belong.
The Maulana and his MMA are doing their utmost
to govern NWFP through Islamic Shariat laws, which in
effect means introducing traditional ways of punishment
according to strict Islamic laws against adultery,
fornication, rape etc. They support the so-called
Islamic Hudood ordinances of 1979 which do not seem to
conform to any canons of the famed Islamic concern for
gender justice, and are even ranged against religious
minorities. While some Islamic scholars supported these
laws when they were promulgated by the late military
ruler of Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq, many have
reservations about them; they consider them repugnant to
the spirit of Islam, if not a gross misinterpretation.
They think these ordinances are contrary to Islamic
injunctions, and at the very least need a review. In any
case. they have few supporters among Muslims in any part
of the world.
Sherry Rehman is dead against
these laws. This former editor of the monthly magazine
Herald is an indefatigable campaigner for their repeal.
As she told Asia Times Online in an exclusive interview
in New Delhi this week, she has moved a bill for the
repeal of the Hudood Ordinance. Called a Bill for
Empowerment and Protection of Women, 2003, it addresses
issues like domestic violence, education and property
rights for women, among other things. Happily, she said,
this bill has been endorsed by the provincial and
central women's committees of the PPPP.
Party
leaders Benazir Bhutto (former premier) and Mukhdoom
Amin Fahim were aware of it, she added, suggesting that
the party had endorsed the move. The PPPP, she hinted,
was also preparing a bill against karo kari
(honor killing of women) for presentation in the
Sindh provincial assembly.
"The laws under this
ordinance are largely anti-women and anti-minority,"
explained Sherry Rehman. "They have never been debated
in parliament, but were brought in by a dictator,
General Zia ul Haq, as an administrative fiat. They have
resulted in a huge miscarriage of justice. This is a
Medieval code of justice imposed on women whose rights
are already precarious."
Explaining the
background of her campaign against Hudood laws, she
says, "While all Hudood laws have created controversies
and have been criticized by important sections of the
ulema (Islamic scholars) as well as human rights
groups, the one that has been most severely criticized
and opposed by most sections is the law relating to
adultery and fornication. Heavily tilted against women,
this particular ordinance has often been abused; victims
of rapes have been jailed, even married couples have
been arrested. Its rape provisions are its worst
features. Invariably, when a woman reports a rape, she
is immediately arrested, and the onus lies on her to
prove who her violator was."
In spite of the
inevitable difficulties, Sherry Rehman sounded confident
that her bill will attract much support. She pointed out
that her campaign was by no means against the spirit of
Islam. In fact, she pleaded that a recent statement by
an official of the Pakistan Law Commission that the
Hudood ordinances needed a review deserves to be taken
seriously by both the government and the ulema.
Sherry Rehman's strong advocacy of reform in
Islamic laws of Pakistan may have an additional benefit
for India. It may help kick-start the stalled debate on
the need for reforms in and better codification of
Muslim personal laws of India in the light of the true
Islamic spirit of gender justice and equality for all.
India is the only major non-Muslim majority
country to allow Muslims to organize their personal life
in accordance with their own religious family laws. But
these laws were codified by the British and need to be
reformed and brought into greater conformity with the
Koran and the requirements of the present age. The
government doesn't want to intervene in what is
essentially a community matter, despite constitutional
advice to evolve a common civil code for the country.
The intra-community debates have stagnated for some time
as the Muslims' attention was diverted to matters of
more immediate concern. It is possible, some community
leaders feel, that Sherry Rehman's forceful advocacy of
change and reform in conformity with the true spirit of
Islam may help focus Indian Muslim attention, too, on
the subject of their own need for reform.
Clearly, Sherry presents a completely
contrasting picture to that of Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
But on the question of normalizing of relations with
India, they seem to be speaking the same language
despite, perhaps, their diverse motivations and reasons.
In the case of Maulana Rehman, it may be a growing
realization in his, as in the minds of an
ever-increasing number of Pakistani people, that the
United States is a greater and more insidious enemy and
that they need normalization of relations with India to
keep America at bay.
The Maulana, of course,
claimed during his visit to India that all religious
groups have always wanted peace and normal relations
with India. He reminded Indians that all religious
parties had indeed even opposed partition of India in
1947 and the creation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim
state at the time of independence from the British.
Rehman's group is an offspring of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema,
which was in the forefront of freedom movement led by
Mahatma Gandhi and opposed Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali
Jinnah's Muslim League tooth and nail.
Sherry,
however, belongs to a group of activists who have sought
to promote peace and good neighborly relations between
the two countries through encouraging people-to-people
contact, often despite governmental opposition. She
visited Mumbai, for instance, at the invitation of the
Mumbai chapter of the Pakistan India People's Forum for
Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD). She asserts that she has
been committed for some time to the "third track" of
diplomacy through people-to-people contact.
Though several non-governmental organizations
promote people-to-people contact at various levels now,
it is the PIPFPD that originally started the movement
several years ago. Joint Indo-Pakistan conventions
comprising several hundred selected people from various
walks of life have been held in both countries in cities
like Lahore, Kolkata, New Delhi, Peshawar and Bangalore.
The next one is due in Karachi from December 12 to 14.
Over 200 Indians will pass through the Attari-Wagah
border checkpost on December 11 to cross into Pakistan
on foot.
Just walking into Pakistan or India is
a luxury hundreds of Indian and Pakistani citizens have
enjoyed for several years now, thanks to the PIPFPD. At
a time when acquiring visas for citizens of both
countries has been next to impossible, and all surface
and air contacts have been cut, the PIPFPD and later
other organizations have provided opportunities for
travel and face-to-face interaction between both
countries.
One problem that faces prominent
politicians like Sherry Rehman is that encounters with
the media can sometimes lead to embarrassing situations.
There is a sort of tacit agreement, as I understand,
between the two national chapters of the PIPFPD that
delegates do not criticize the governments of the host
countries. So Sherry Rehman, for instance, is not
supposed to criticize the Indian government while on an
India visit organized by the PIPFPD. This doesn't make
the media happy. For those anchoring television channels
in this age of intense competition, the more big fights
and hard talk the better.
One such problem arose
when the New Delhi Television (NDTV) invited Sherry to
participate in a popular program Big Fight when she was
here on her earlier visit this summer in a delegation of
Pakistani parliamentarians. The managing editor of NDTV,
Rajdeep Sardesai, says: "I invited Sherry Rehman to the
Big Fight debate show on our channel. Sherry is not just
among the most glamorous persons you could hope to meet,
but also among the most sensible. A brilliant
Karachi-based editor, she has often taken on the
Pakistani establishment, and easily won a seat in the
last elections. She has been critical of the army, and
equally critical of the politicians who have ravaged
Pakistan.
"Quite apart from the obvious glamour
factor, I thought Sherry would help break a few
stereotypes: a globalized Pakistan woman, liberal in
outlook, who has cut through the purdah [veil] to
make a name for herself. As it turned out, Sherry agreed
to join us on the program, only for the Indian
organizers of the visit to spike it. The organizers, the
Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy, felt that
her presence in a live debate would not be appropriate.
'She will be forced to take a hardline Pakistani
position in any debate which becomes an Indo-Pak
confrontation. If you want to interview her, we have no
problem, but we don't want her facing a live Indian
audience', was the plea of the organizers."
From
this episode, Sardesai concludes that it reveals the
limitations of the peace movement through
people-to-people interaction. He wrote in an article in
Midday: "Now, one has the highest respect for the peace
activists. It takes courage and commitment to try and
resist state power and organize events like the visit of
the Pakistani MPs, the first of its kind in years. We've
also witnessed the shameful manner in which [ruling] BJP
[Bharatiya Janata Party] MPs refused to meet with the
Pakistani delegation. To that extent, my sympathies were
almost entirely with the organizers.
"And yet,
the response of the peace groups also reveals the
limitations of their project. From candlelight vigils at
Wagah [border check-post] to strumming guitars and
singing Bob Dylan numbers in Lodi Garden to holding
Indo-Pak seminars in Kathmandu, the peace groups have
tended to live in their own little cocoon. Indeed, while
their efforts have been well-meaning, the fact is that
they haven't been able to widen the constituency for
peace."
Anyone who has participated in any of
the national or India-Pakistan joint conventions of the
PIPFPD would not agree. The very idea of Indians and
Pakistanis traveling to each others' country just to
interact with people used to be quite novel and indeed
sounded strange and impossible at the time it was
floated. Indians and Pakistanis, even prominent members
of parliament and NGOs, could only meet with one another
abroad, not in either country.
Now such
interaction, despite the growing political difficulties
of the past years, has become almost routine. Like
Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Sherry Rehman's visits to
India, the visit of the former chief minister of Bihar
state, Laloo Prasad Yadav, to Pakistan has become one of
the more memorable events for the people of both
countries. The value of people, some of them quite
influential in their own fields, discovering vast
amounts of goodwill in a country that is considered a
permanent enemy is enormous and immeasurable.
That Sherry Rehman can commend the Indian
government for the 12 confidence-building measures that
were suggested recently and do it from Indian soil, as
she did while talking to Asia Times Online and other
media outlets, at a time when the government of her
country is laughing it off, gives Indians a perspective
laden with peace possibilities and is vital for the
growth of the peace and democracy movement in South
Asia. Those who understand that peace is a vital
ingredient of progress, even survival, cannot but value
such visits enormously.
While appreciating the
confidence-building measures offered by India, Sherry
Rehman also stressed that sustainable peace between
India and Pakistan was not possible unless all issues
were put on the negotiating table. "We should not insult
each other. Real diplomacy cannot be a flippant
exercise. If India is concerned about cross-border
terrorism, let's put it on the table. If Pakistan wants
to talk about Kashmir, let that be on the table too. You
cannot begin a process by laying down pre-conditions and
telling the other party that you will talk about
everything except what the other side considers
important," she said.
She also stressed that any
discussion on Kashmir must involve Kashmiris from "both
sides of the border" because "Kashmir is not a real
estate issue". "One way of dispelling the myths that
surround the Kashmir issue would be to allow the media
from both countries to travel and write about conditions
in the region on both sides of the border. Azad Kashmir
[Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir or POK in Indian lexicon] is
integrated in many ways with Pakistan. But we welcome
you to come and see the reality. Transparency is
critical," she said.
One of Sherry Rehman's
favorite quotes is from Paul Valery's Reflections on
the World Today: "History is the most dangerous
product ever concocted by the chemistry of the
intellect. It inebriates nations, saddles them with
false memories, keeps their old sores running, torments
them when they are not at rest, and induces in them
megalomania and the mania of persecution."
Let
us hope Sherry Rehman is able to contribute to the
current efforts to save South Asia from the trap of
history.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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