Imran Khan: Down but Not Out

EXACTLY A YEAR BACK, close to Valentine’s Day, I wrote about our love-hate relationship with Pakistan. Even more pertinently, the “puzzling lack of consensus” in the Indian establishment when it comes to bête noir. With its ongoing turmoil and uncertainty, this lack of consensus has extended across the world, not to mention within Pakistan itself. Even if not entirely rigged, Pakistan’s recent election was all but fixed. Now, it has come unravelled in an unpredictable way.

Why? Because jailed former cricketing superstar and now would-be political messiah, Imran Khan, has delivered a couple of deadly bouncers to both the army led by his arch-nemesis, Asim Munir, as well as to his political rivals, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). What is more, the over isn’t over yet; he still has a few more balls to bowl. Though not allowed to contest, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) has already claimed victory, with the largest number of elected legislators, over 100, most of them independents, in the country’s 336-member national assembly. True, he doesn’t have the 169 required to form the government, but is still ahead of his rivals, PML-N at 73, and PPP at 54.

To continue the cricketing metaphor, while the army and the opposition fixed—or shall we say queered—the pitch, Khan, notorious, along with other Pakistani pacers, for ball tampering, swung back hard. Even from prison, thanks mostly to his social media handles, including an Artificial Intelligence avatar, he smashed and scored boundaries and sixes. Even without a bat, his election symbol that was denied to him. Has he won the match yet? We can’t be sure. Pakistan will remain unsettled for a while, given its many contentious players, both on the field and behind the scenes. Not to speak of the match fixers on the international stage, the puppet masters, the US predominantly and more recently, China, who have kept our neighbours dangling by all the strings that they have pulled these past decades.

But one thing is clear. Khan has unleashed a political force, a movement even, which cannot be curtailed, let alone bottled up, easily. It is, moreover, a sort of people’s mass awakening, which several have called a revolution, on a scale that Pakistan has never witnessed. It is akin to their own freedom movement, this time not only from colonial oppressors, but domestic tyrants as well. Khan has been the X-factor, a somewhat unpredictable maverick, who has risked his political future, even his life, for a cause greater than himself or his party. In doing so, he has captured the imagination of a people so fed up with being taken for a ride and taken for granted by the political class and the army top brass. Enough! That is the message that they are sending, all the way from Karachi, through Lahore and Islamabad, to Peshawar.

But to return to the question I raised last year, what should we do? How should we react or respond to our distressed neighbours? We want so much to love our neighbours, even our enemies, but our experience of love being returned by hate and betrayal has made us, understandably, wary. Perhaps, that is why my column was called, somewhat ironically though not unkindly, “Hate Your Enemy: The Futility of Engaging with a Pakistan in Distress” (February 27, 2023). The point was comprehensively to refute the egregiously pro-Pakistan flannel spun out by the likes of Mani Shankar Aiyar who, once again, put his foot in this mouth by calling Pakistan India’s greatest asset.

When it comes to Pakistan, to be a dove is suicidal. Yes. But is this the right time to be a hawk? Perhaps not. A principled non-interference till matters settle, but with clear signalling that normalisation of relations will come only after certain minimum conditions are met. Indeed, this seems to be India’s stance. It is believed that one reason Sharif was brought back from his London exile was exactly to improve relations with India. But we are not going to be taken in by honeyed words and a poisoned hidden dagger behind the back. Let us not forget that Pakistan is an enemy and that its foundational and still-professed ideology is the hatred of India and Hindus. This has to change. Pakistan must stop cross-border terrorism and interference, reign its jihadi proxies and so-called non-state actors, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere, whose sole purpose is to hurt and destabilise India. No more trying to bleed us by a thousand cuts. No more harbouring anti-India actors and wanted terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim, whose rumoured and, some say, staged death was a way to get him off the radar of India’s—or your guess is as good as mine— “unknown men.”

Let us make no mistake. What has actually worked with Pakistan is the scrapping of high value notes and fake currency, Balakot-style retaliations, and Article 370. In addition, of course, to the diplomatic freeze and tough talk. Treating Pakistan as a pariah state and terrorism factory in international forums. Being aggressive rather than defensive when it comes to protecting both our territory and our interests. It is this, despite all of Pakistan’s dirty tricks, that has tilted the narrative in our favour. That is why we are on the verge of winning the battle of perceptions too. In a word, when it comes to Pakistan, bellicosity, not gullibility, is the answer.

This must not change. As I said last year, “India and Pakistan can—and should be—friends. But that can only happen when the Pakistani state, army, and, yes, its populace at large, disavow the ideology of Pakistan.” What, then, is different now? It’s the people’s push against this very ideology of Pakistan that suddenly seems to make a new beginning possible. The people of Pakistan have, it would seem, understood that neither India nor Hindus are their enemies. Their real enemies are their selfish ruling elites and the army, which instead of being the protector and saviour of Pakistan, is a deadly parasite, a leech, which is sucking their lifeblood. The people’s rebellion against the army is what Khan’s justice movement for Pakistan, which is the literal meaning of his party, symbolises.

But the army’s hold on Pakistan is not likely to lessen or loosen. Hence, India’s continuing tough line becomes imperative. But if the ISI and other unaccountable state or non-state actors are brought under control and forswear their anti-India activities, if political stability prevents chaos and violence from spilling over, if constructive cooperation and dialogue made stronger ties and neighbourly relations possible, then the gradual, calibrated and evidence-based thawing of relations is certainly possible.

But that is so many ifs. “To hate your enemies is unnecessary; to love them is dangerous…to mistakenly consider enemies as friends is the height of idiocy, bordering on suicide”—this remains our watchword a year later too. But Pakistan’s man of the hour, even if not man of the match, the “unelectable” Imran Khan, might hold out some ineluctable promise or opportunity that we must not forego. In July 2018, Khan’s PTI won 115 of the 272 seats contested in the national assembly. The remaining 70 or so seats in the bicameral Majlis-e- Shura are reserved for women and minorities. With over 100 under his belt, Khan is not all that far behind his last score. His supporters have already taken to the streets protesting against their leader being denied a fair chance at forming the government. Some sort of compromise is bound to be cobbled together.

India must wait, watch and—yes—not forego whatever advantage it can derive from the situation. What is also comforting and different this time round is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, despite being election-bound itself, is in pole position to do precisely this.

electionsImran KhanNawaz SharifPakistanPakistan ArmyTehreek-e-Insaf party