The sun and the moon

Around a millennium and four hundred years ago, the chieftains of the Quraish in Mecca offered inducements to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to desist from preaching his message and in return they would give him wealth, power and whatever else he wanted. The greatest man who has ever lived gave this immediate reply: “If they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left, I shall not give up my mission…”

I don’t know about you but this still sends chills down my spine. Incredible. He laid down the rule for all human beings to do the right thing no matter what the inducements, a lesson that Muslim rulers have rarely followed and have reaped a bitter harvest. Now a millennium and four hundred years later, a Pakistani prime minister told an interviewer when asked whether he would give military bases to America from where they could attack Afghanistan and whoever else they consider a security risk, Imran Khan said categorically, “Absolutely not.” And therein lies great cause for pride in Pakistan. He not only held our flag aloft but also followed the example of the Holy Prophet (pbuh). God bless him.

When we gave three bases to the US during the war on terror in Afghanistan, we paid for it dearly in the form of terrorism in our country, the loss of 70,000-80,000 Pakistani lives, much opprobrium and, if truth be told, hardly any goodies came our way. Now with America running away from Afghanistan with its tail between its legs, the danger for us is that the civil war, which will inevitably be sparked in Afghanistan, could have damaging consequences for us and we could end up with another wave of Afghan refugees to tend to. Remember that the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan led to its collapse. The defeat of America and its Nato allies in Afghanistan and now its rushed and unseemly withdrawal without any political settlement will also lead to dire consequences for America. But I can say with a degree of certainty that America will pay heavily for its twenty-year genocide in Afghanistan.

Pakistan should learn lessons too, namely and firstly that we should not go running – wagging our tails – to the side of what looks like the more powerful party in a war and side with it while throwing all morality out of the window. It is entirely possible that America would have wreaked revenge on us with India wagging its tail with its demented ambitions, but never forget our best friend China which would not have taken this lying down.

Another inevitable crazy demand was to come from the West, not for the first time. Distance yourself from China. “Absolutely not,” said Imran Khan again. China is our old (our relationship started in 1956) tried and tested and heavily trusted ally. In fact, it is more than an ally. In many regards, both countries are a part of one another, emotionally and mentally. In the 1980s, when I used to be very close to the Chinese leadership, a very senior leader of China, Dr Huang Tsian of the Long March fame said to me at a private lunch, “What does India think it is? It is a hegemonic and expansionist country.”

I told him that even though India is a large country, it suffers from a small country complex. It is frightened even of its shadow. It is because they have been servile to invaders (mostly Muslim) for a thousand years. So it has to show up somewhere. Dr Tsian nodded his head gravely and said, “Chip on the shoulder or not, if they are not careful, they will have to be made careful for their own sake.”

Be that as it may, China’s thinking about our arch-enemy is about the same as Pakistan’s. When I used to go to various regions of China, I was invariably invited to give a lecture at their closest university. I used to find thousands of Pakistani students studying there, mostly medicine. In the University of Xinjiang in the Gobi Desert, there were over 3,000 Pakistani students all studying medicine. They had learnt Chinese and had become popular by cooking occasional Pakistani meals and inviting their Chinese peers to eat with them. Some also married in China. The Chinese exchanged confidences with the Pakistani students as if they were speaking to their own.

So when Imran Khan repeated both these answers in parliament – about the American bases and distancing from China – he followed the sunnah of our Holy Prophet (pbuh), may God bless him and give him more conviction and faith. It was one of the two best speeches he has ever made, the first being his address to the UN General Assembly and now the second one in the budget rounding up speech. In this speech one also saw a mellower Imran Khan, less angry, not shrill and ready to make a sensible peace with the opposition without giving up on his principles. That portends well both for Pakistan and for Imran. As Allama Iqbal said, if you bow before the stranger, you lose your heart and body. I would add that you also lose your soul.

To top all this, Imran also reminded India that there could be no dialogue or diplomatic relationship with it until it took back its August 5 shenanigans by which it took away the autonomous status of Indian occupied Kashmir and tried to merge it into the Indian Union. A second intifada erupted and since then, many more innocent Kashmiris have been killed or maimed, girls raped, houses demolished.

I tell you, it is a veritable holocaust going on there not even genocide. And the sooner the world wakes up to it and gives India a spanking, the better for the one billion people of India and of course the people of the many countries around it.

The writer is a veteran journalist, political analyst and author.

Email: humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com