A Vision of United India

ICG Asia Report N°73 16 January 2004

UNFULFILLED PROMISES:

PAKISTAN'S FAILURE TO TACKLE EXTREMISM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

It has been more than two years since President and Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf pledged to reform Pakistani society by reversing the trend of Islamist extremism. In a televised speech, he promised a series of measures to combat extremism. One of the key issues was to bring all madrasas - the religious schools that educate many Pakistani children - into the mainstream and to increase scrutiny of them by controlling funding and curriculum. President Musharraf's call for an end to the promotion of an ideology of jihad was welcomed around the world. Two years on, however, the failure to deliver to any substantial degree on pledges to reform the madrasas and contain the growth of jihadi networks means that religious extremism in Pakistan continues to pose a threat to domestic, regional and international security. Declaring that no institutions would be above the law, the government said it would: register all madrasas so that it had a clear idea of which groups were running which schools; regulate the curriculum so that all madrasas would adopt a government curriculum by the end of 2002; stop the use of madrasas and mosques as centers for the spread of politically and religious inflammatory statements and publications; and establish model madrasas that would provide modern, useful education and not promote extremism. New rules were to be outlined in a presidential ordinance. "No individual, organisation or party will be allowed to break the law of the land," Musharraf declared. However, to date no such regulation has been promulgated. Most madrasas remain unregistered. No national syllabus has been developed. No rules on funding of madrasas have been adopted. The government has repeated the rhetoric of mainstreaming madrasa education on many occasions but has pledged that it will not interfere in the affairs of those schools. While three model madrasas have been set up and have enrolled around 300 students, as many as 1.5 million students attend unregulated madrasas. President Musharraf had promised to crack down on terrorism and end the jihadi culture in Pakistan. He declared that no organisation would be allowed to indulge in terrorism in India-administered Kashmir. While several Pakistani groups were banned, their leaders were not prosecuted under the Anti- terrorism Act. One extremist leader was allowed to run for parliament and indeed won a seat though more than twenty charges of violent crimes were pending against him. Many secular politicians were disqualified for much less, including not having a higher education. Banned groups were allowed to continue working under new identities with the same leadership. Many, though banned a second time in November 2003, continue to function unhindered and are likely to resurface under new names again. The government has done very little to implement tougher controls on financing of either madrasas or extremist groups despite obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1373. It has failed to pass the necessary laws, even removing the issue of terrorism funding from draft regulations on money laundering on the misleading claim that it was already covered under an earlier law on terrorism. Pakistan's laws on terrorism and extremist groups remain muddled and opaque. While the government claims to be tackling terrorism, it has taken almost no steps towards restricting the extremism that permeates parts of the society. Even al Qaeda was not officially banned until March 2003. Musharraf's failure owes less to the difficulty of implementing reforms than to the military government's

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own unwillingness. Indeed, he is following the pattern of the country's previous military rulers in co-opting religious extremists to support his government's agenda and to neutralize his secular political opposition. Far from combating extremism, the military government has promoted it through its electoral policies and its failure to implement effective reform. Whatever measures have so far been taken against extremism have been largely cosmetic, to ease international pressure. Government inaction has resulted in a resurgence of domestic extremism, including sectarian violence. The failure to penetrate and crack down on terrorist networks is evident in two assassination attempts against President Musharraf himself in December 2003. The jihads in Kashmir and Afghanistan, which in different degrees owe much to support from within Pakistan, remain threats to regional peace. Reliant even more than in the past on the religious right for regime survival after the passage of the Seventeenth Constitutional Amendment with the MMA's support, Musharraf remains unlikely to take the decisive actions against domestic jihadis and jihadi madrasas he pledged in January 2002 and has reiterated repeatedly. These unfulfilled promises could well prove his undoing.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Pakistan Government:

Establish immediately a Madrasa Regulatory Authority, headed by the Interior Minister, to:

(a) Impose mandatory registration and classification of the madrasa sector;

(b) empower the Pakistan Madrasa Education Board to revise and standardise curriculum and ensure it is implemented;

(c) review existing laws for the registration of non-governmental organisations with a view to tightening financial controls and strengthening the monitoring infrastructure; and

(d) link grants to madrasas under the Education Ministry's Madrasa Reforms Plan to their registration, declaration of financial assets and acceptance and implementation of standardised religious and general curriculums.

2. Sign immediately the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

3. Take effective action against all extremist groups and parties, in particular,

(a) dismantle the infrastructure of groups banned under the Anti-Terrorism Law by prosecuting their leaders, making public the evidence for which the groups were proscribed, and preventing members from regrouping and reorganising under new identities;

(b) close all madrasas affiliated with banned organisations;

(c) close all other jihadi madrasas, including those linked to religious parties.

4. Ensure that any political deals with religious parties do not involve conditions that compromise basic civil liberties or Pakistan's obligations under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373.

5. Use the federal government's constitutional powers to override any provincial legislation that conflicts with basic constitutional liberties in order to prevent the provincial governments dominated by the religious umbrella alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), from implementing policies that violate those liberties.

6. Pursue an even-handed policy towards religious and secular parties.

To the International Community:

7. Publicly urge Pakistan to meet its obligations under UNSC Resolution 1373.

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8. Hold the Pakistani government to its commitments to madrasa reform, and in particular urge it to:

(a) close all madrasas linked to banned extremist groups and all other jihadi madrasas;

(b) establish a Madrasa Regulatory Authority under the Ministry of Interior with sufficient powers to overcome clerical resistance; and

(c) institute mandatory, rather than voluntary, registration, curriculum reform, and financial control mechanisms.

9. Call upon Pakistan to sign immediately the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and fulfil the obligations imposed by that document.

Islamabad/Brussels, 16 January 2004

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Sri Aurobindo on

Parliamentary Democracy

A few quotations and references

March 16, 1908

It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of the world which makes selfishness the root of action, and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe.¹

***

July 13, 1911

(From a letter to a friend.)

Be very careful to follow my instructions in avoiding the old kind of politics. Spirituality is India's only politics, the fulfilment of the Sanatana Dharma its only Swaraj. I have no doubt we shall have to go through our Parliamentary period in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by seeing in practice how helpless it is to make nations blessed. India is passing really through the first stages of a sort of national Yoga. It was mastered in the inception by the inrush of divine force which came in 1905 and aroused it from its state of complete tamasic ajñanam [ignorance]. But, as happens also with individuals, all that was evil, all the wrong samskaras [imprints] and wrong emotions and mental and moral habits rose with it and misused the divine force. Hence all that orgy of political oratory, democratic fervour, meetings, processions, passive

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resistance, all ending in bombs, revolvers and Coercion laws.... God has struck it all down, — Moderatism, the bastard child of English Liberalism; Nationalism, the mixed progeny of Europe and Asia; Terrorism, the abortive offspring of Bakunin and Mazzini.... It is only when this foolishness is done with that truth will have a chance, the sattwic mind in India emerge and a really strong spiritual movement begin as a prelude to India's regeneration. No doubt, there will be plenty of trouble and error still to face, but we shall have a chance of putting our feet on the right path. In all I believe God to be guiding us, giving the necessary experiences, preparing the necessary conditions.²

***

c. 1914

Democracy in Europe is the rule of the Cabinet minister, the corrupt deputy or the self-seeking capitalist masqued by the occasional sovereignty of a wavering populace; Socialism in Europe is likely to be the rule of the official and policeman masqued by the theoretic sovereignty of an abstract State. It is chimerical to enquire which is the better system; it would be difficult to decide which is the worse.³

***

c. 1918

Certainly, democracy as it is now practised is not the last or penultimate stage; for it is often merely democratic in appearance and even at the best amounts to the rule of the majority and works by the vicious method of party government, defects the increasing perception of which enters largely into the present-day dissatisfaction with parliamentary systems.⁴

***

January 5, 1920

(From a letter to Joseph Baptista, a co-worker of Tilak.)

2 Archives & Research, December 1977, p. 84.
3 From Thoughts and Aphorisms.
4 The Ideal of Human Unity, 15.434.

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Dear Baptista,

I do not at all look down on politics or political action or consider I have got above them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and intention of political activity would differ considerably from anything now current in the field.... What preoccupies me now is the question what [the country] is going to do with its self-determination, how will it use its freedom, on what lines is it going to determine its future?

You may ask why not come out and help, myself, so far as I can, in giving a lead? But my mind has a habit of running inconveniently ahead of the times, — some might say, out of time altogether into the world of the ideal. Your party, you say, is going to be a social democratic party. Now I believe in something which might be called social democracy, but not in any of the forms now current, and I am not altogether in love with the European kind, however great an improvement it may be on the past. I hold that India having a spirit of her own and a governing temperament proper to her own civilisation, should in politics as in everything else strike out her own original path and not stumble in the wake of Europe. But this is precisely what she will be obliged to do, if she has to start on the road in her present chaotic and unprepared condition of mind. No doubt people talk of India developing on her own lines, but nobody seems to have very clear or sufficient ideas as to what those lines are to be. In this matter I have formed ideals and certain definite ideas of my own, in which at present very few are likely to follow me, — since they are governed by an uncompromising spiritual idealism of an unconventional kind and would be unintelligible to many and an offence and stumbling-block to a great number.⁵

***

7 April 1926

The parliamentary form would be hardly suitable for our people. Of course, it is not necessary that you should have today the same old forms [as in ancient India]. But you can take the line of evolution and follow the bent of the genius of the race....⁶

 5 On Himself, 26.430-431.

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27 December 1938

Parliamentary Government is not suited to India. But we always take up what the West has thrown off.... [In an ideal government for India,] there may be one Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to secure a continuity of policy, and an assembly representative of the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation united at the top, leaving ample scope to local bodies to make laws according to their local problems.⁷

***

February 2, 1939

Nowadays people want the modern type of democracy — the parliamentary form of government. The parliamentary system is doomed. It has brought Europe to its present sorry pass....

[In India] one should begin with the old Panchayat system in the villages and then work up to the top. The Panchayat system and the guilds are more representative and they have a living contact with people; they are part of the people's ideas. On the contrary, the parliamentary system with local bodies — the municipal councils — is not workable: these councils have no living contact with the people; the councillors make only platform speeches and nobody knows what they do for three or four years; at the end they reshuffle

and rearrange the whole thing, making their own pile during their period of power.⁸

***

International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 16: 374-388, 2003

Copyright # 2003 Taylor & Francis Inc.

ISSN: 0885-0607 print/1521-0561 online

DOI: 10.1080/08850600390201477

7 Evening Talks, p. 564.
8 Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran (Sri Aurobindo Society, 1986), p. 274-280.

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References in the book

We give below, chapter by chapter, references or guides to the sources.

Chapter 1

No 1. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 14, The Foundations of Indian Culture pp- 366-367 p 16 in the manuscript

No 2. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 14, The Foundations of Indian Culture pp- 367-368. p 21-22 in the manuscript

Chapter 5

No 1. Sri Aurobindo and the New Thought in Indian Politics by Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee pp -xxxviii p 56 in the manuscript

No 2. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 2 Karmayogin pp 245-246 p 59 in the manuscript

No 3. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 2 Karmayogin pp -262 p 59 in the manuscript

No4. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 2 Karmayogin pp- 24 p 60 in the manuscript

No 5. From an unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo p 63 in the manuscript

No 6. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 2 Karmayogin pp 3 onwards p 66 in the manuscript

Chapter 6

No1. India's Rebirth pp -161 p 72 in the manuscript

No 2. India's Rebirth pp175 p72 in the manuscript

No 3. India's Rebirth pp -160 p72 in the manuscript

No 4. India's Rebirth pp - 167 p73 in the manuscript

Chapter 7

No1. India's Rebirth pp -237 p 80 in the manuscript

Chapter 8

No 1. Collected Works of the Mother - Centenary Edition Vol 13 - Words of the Mother pp- 125-126 p 81 in the manuscript

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No 2. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 26 On Himself pp - 393 p 82 in the manuscript

No 3. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 26 On Himself pp - 396-398 p 83 in the manuscript

No 4. India's Rebirth pp - 218 p 88 in the manuscript

No 5. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 26 On Himself pp - 404 p100 in the manuscript

Chapter 9

No 1 .

No 2. India's Rebirth pp-16 p 104 in the manuscript

No 3. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 26 On Himself pp - 40-41 p 105 in the manuscript

No 4. India's Rebirth pp - 160-161 p 109 in the manuscript

No 5. From an unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo p 114 in the manuscript

No 6. . Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 15 Social and Political Thought pp -288-289 p115 in the manuscript

Part 2

Chapter 2

No 1. From an unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo p 145 in the manuscript

No 2. White Roses compiled and Published by Huta pp -279 p 151 in the manuscript

Chapter 3

No 1. Kargil, the manifestation of a deeper problem p 157 in the manuscript

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Book 2

Chapter 1

No. 1 Kargil, the manifestation of a deeper problem p 203 in the manuscript

No 2. From an unpublished letter of the Mother to a disciple p 203 in the manuscript

Chapter 10

No 1. India's Rebirth pp 89 p 293 in the manuscript No 2. India's Rebirth pp207 p293 in the manuscript

Chapter 11

No 1.Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 16 The Supramental Manifestation pp 394 p 302 in the manuscript

No 2. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 20, The Synthesis of Yoga pp 27 p 302 in the manuscript

N0 3. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 20 The Synthesis of Yoga pp28-33 p 303 in the manuscript

No 4. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Vol 20 The Synthesis of Yoga pp37 p 303 in the manuscript

No 5. Collected Works of the Mother, Centenary Edition, Vol 12 On Education, pp403-404 p 303-304 in the manuscript

No 6. from the Collected works of the Mother p 404 in the manuscript

To make it easier, I have put the page of the reference and at the end the page in the manuscript.

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