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Relevent thoughts here..
The first wife syndrome – The Express Tribune
The best simple explanation of the relationship between Pakistan and the US is the analogy of the first wife and the husband.
Pakistan is the faithful first wife, who is always ready to do her master’s bidding, but now the evil husband — the US — has been charmed by the shining India of Modi, the wicked second wife, and does not care about the first one. Anyone watching Pakistani news channels — and they are numerous — during the visit of the US president to India would be convinced of this reality. Programme after programme discussed how shameful it was for Pakistan that the American president was visiting India, but not Pakistan. Several pundits, including the ex-governor of Punjab Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar, opined that the fact that Obama did not visit Pakistan was a foreign policy “failure”.
Many TV shows trashed the Nawaz Sharif government for this debacle and demanded its resignation. Even the terminology we use to explain our relationship with the US gives a dejected first wife feeling. We feel ‘betrayed’ by America time and again despite having done its bidding, but it has not been ‘faithful’ to us. Quite simply, it just sounds like a bad marriage.
Now imagine another scenario: that of President Obama visiting France but not Germany. Imagine German Chancellor Angela Merkel being blasted on all TV channels for not making a US president’s visit possible. Sounds ridiculous? It does indeed to me.
Simply put: Pakistan will not develop as a country and become a stable member of the world comity unless it sheds its India-centric foreign (and even domestic) policy. None of India’s neighbours do it to the extent we do it, and unless we stop obsessing about India all the time, we will never move on. Obsession with India over everything has less to do with our real and imagined threat from India, and more to do with the fact that we have yet to move on from the ‘Partition moment’ and develop an independent identity, which is not tied to India behaving in a particular manner. If a lot of our actions are just reactions to India, and not our independent decisions, we will always be beholden to India and its behaviour.
For a country so concerned about its ‘sovereignty’ and ‘integrity’, I am surprised that we are not ashamed of this attitude of ours. The news from India is also not encouraging from our perspective on this count. Since the coming in of the Modi Sarkar, the government has practically decided to ignore Pakistan, and wants little to do with us.
Secondly, as evident during Obama’s visit, India is no longer ‘trying’ to become a regional power. Modi’s mannerism and approach to the visit clearly showed that India now assumes that it is a regional power, and that it is now vying for world power and influence. This ‘ignore Pakistan’ policy and ‘moving on’ from regional power games will also have implications for Pakistan and in fact make Pakistan’s stance even more sad and, dare I say, pathetic.
So shall we stop being the miserable first wife of the US and a country obsessed with India, and grow up and develop our country on a sounder, more pragmatic basis?
Published in The Express Tribune, February 7th, 2015.
Relevent thoughts here..
The first wife syndrome – The Express Tribune
The best simple explanation of the relationship between Pakistan and the US is the analogy of the first wife and the husband.
Pakistan is the faithful first wife, who is always ready to do her master’s bidding, but now the evil husband — the US — has been charmed by the shining India of Modi, the wicked second wife, and does not care about the first one. Anyone watching Pakistani news channels — and they are numerous — during the visit of the US president to India would be convinced of this reality. Programme after programme discussed how shameful it was for Pakistan that the American president was visiting India, but not Pakistan. Several pundits, including the ex-governor of Punjab Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar, opined that the fact that Obama did not visit Pakistan was a foreign policy “failure”.
Many TV shows trashed the Nawaz Sharif government for this debacle and demanded its resignation. Even the terminology we use to explain our relationship with the US gives a dejected first wife feeling. We feel ‘betrayed’ by America time and again despite having done its bidding, but it has not been ‘faithful’ to us. Quite simply, it just sounds like a bad marriage.
Now imagine another scenario: that of President Obama visiting France but not Germany. Imagine German Chancellor Angela Merkel being blasted on all TV channels for not making a US president’s visit possible. Sounds ridiculous? It does indeed to me.
Simply put: Pakistan will not develop as a country and become a stable member of the world comity unless it sheds its India-centric foreign (and even domestic) policy. None of India’s neighbours do it to the extent we do it, and unless we stop obsessing about India all the time, we will never move on. Obsession with India over everything has less to do with our real and imagined threat from India, and more to do with the fact that we have yet to move on from the ‘Partition moment’ and develop an independent identity, which is not tied to India behaving in a particular manner. If a lot of our actions are just reactions to India, and not our independent decisions, we will always be beholden to India and its behaviour.
For a country so concerned about its ‘sovereignty’ and ‘integrity’, I am surprised that we are not ashamed of this attitude of ours. The news from India is also not encouraging from our perspective on this count. Since the coming in of the Modi Sarkar, the government has practically decided to ignore Pakistan, and wants little to do with us.
Secondly, as evident during Obama’s visit, India is no longer ‘trying’ to become a regional power. Modi’s mannerism and approach to the visit clearly showed that India now assumes that it is a regional power, and that it is now vying for world power and influence. This ‘ignore Pakistan’ policy and ‘moving on’ from regional power games will also have implications for Pakistan and in fact make Pakistan’s stance even more sad and, dare I say, pathetic.
So shall we stop being the miserable first wife of the US and a country obsessed with India, and grow up and develop our country on a sounder, more pragmatic basis?
Published in The Express Tribune, February 7th, 2015.
