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Leadership
Islamabad diary
Ayaz
Amir
Leadership is not part-timism. It is
a single-minded vocation that brooks no rivals and indeed can
co-exist with no distractions. You can't be into business deals and
kickbacks and the other pursuits that define leadership in a country
such as Pakistan and yet lay claim to honest leadership. It just
doesn't happen that way.
The thought of property acquisition,
plots and flats here and there, nest-eggs in London and New York,
hobnobbing with property tycoons and other shady characters, are no
part of leadership.
M A Jinnah, M K Gandhi, Jawaharlal
Nehru were titans who lived politics and were consumed by politics.
They were very much men of the world but in a sense other-worldly
too in that what they cared about the most were idealistic things,
things of the mind and the spirit. (He ne'er is called to
immortality, wrote Keats, who fails to follow where airy voices
lead.) Ordinary men could not have written what Gandhi and Nehru
did. An ordinary man could not have delivered the speech that Jinnah
did in the Constituent Assembly on Aug 11, 1947.
Here was a man who had led the fight
for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent on the
basis of Muslim separatism. Yet at the very moment of his triumph he
was exhorting his countrymen to leave the past behind and transcend
the foundations of Partition.
Pakistanis try to impose a
supernatural consistency on Jinnah's political life. They are wrong.
He was first a Congressite nationalist, then a Muslim separatist but
when the goal for which he had struggled was on the very point of
consummation he tried to sketch out another template for the future
of the country he was founding.
Did Mustafa Kamal, Father of the
Turks, leave behind any material possessions? His life was devoted
first to his military career, in which he excelled, winning renown
in the battle of Gallipoli where he was the senior Turkish
commander; and then to the cause of Turkish independence. He was
fond of drinking, and drank at times to excess, justifying it on the
grounds that it was good for his chronic constipation (doctors of
digestive disorders may kindly take note).
There's no point in beating about the
bush. He was also fond of women. (At times he was also fond of other
things but let's not get into that). Asked once as to what was the
quality he admired most in women, his wry answer was, "Availability"
-- a sentiment sure to outrage feminists and other stalwarts of the
various women's movements. But all these proclivities were
subordinate to the one overriding passion which dominated his waking
hours, and perhaps even his dreams: Turkey's rebirth and redemption
after the chaos and humiliation of Ottoman decline and fall.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao: all of them
driven souls, single-minded individuals, their lives dominated by
one passion alone, revolution. All three were voracious readers;
autodidacts all their lives. Lenin as Soviet leader often read
dictionaries for relaxation. Stalin wrote poems (some surprisingly
good) and read books on history and biography all the time. Mao as
Chinese leader practically lived in his library. He had an oversized
bed strewn with books and it was on the same bed that he consorted
with the regular stream of female comrades arranged by his helpful
bodyguards to help lighten his loneliness.
Philip Short's excellent biography of
Mao has this to say about the bed and its occasional occupants: "The
tradition of Saturday night dances in Yan'an (during the Long March)
had survived the move to Zhongnanhai (in Beijing after the
communists had come to power). From the dance floor, Mao and his
young partners would gravitate to his study… beside the pile of
books stacked on his vast bed. The girls came from dance troupes
organised by the cultural division of the PLA (Peoples Liberation
Army), chosen both for their looks and their political reliability."
One of the things sadly missing in
the Pakistan army: it has no cultural division.
When the German army was close to
Moscow in October 1941 there was panic in the city and plans were
made for its evacuation. A train had been prepared specially for
Stalin. Here from Montefiore's excellent life of Stalin: "Stalin
hesitated for two long days. No one knows his exact movements but he
no longer appeared in his office. At the height of the legendary
struggle for Moscow the Supremo actually dossed down in his
greatcoat on a mattress in the subterranean halls of the Metro, not
unlike an omnipotent tramp."
And where did the Supremo sleep? In a
small space sealed off from running trains by plywood. A space also
was created for his use as an office: "Passing trains caused pages
to fly so they were pinned to desks. After working all day in his
subterranean offices, Stalin would finally stagger over to his
sleeping compartment in the early hours…It is hard to imagine any of
the other warlords living in such a way but Stalin was accustomed to
dossing down like the young revolutionary he once was."
And then Stalin decided that Moscow
would not be abandoned. When the Politburo seemed to be in two minds
he asked his housekeeper, also rumoured to be his mistress, "Valentina
Vasilevna, are you preparing to leave Moscow?" "Comrade Stalin," she
answered, "Mother is our Mother, our home. It should be defended."
And that was that.
Not only was Moscow not abandoned,
Stalin, to the astonishment of his colleagues, also decided that the
traditional Revolution Day parade on November 7 would be held. "I'll
see to it personally. If there's an air raid during the parade and
there are dead and wounded, they must be quickly removed and the
parade allowed to go on. A newsreel should be made and distributed
throughout the country. I'll make a speech…"
The parade and speech can be seen on
YouTube. The speech is just six and half minutes long, delivered in
a very calm manner with no poetic or rhetorical flourishes whatever.
But it says everything there is to say and leaves a deep impression.
We all know the last part of
Churchill's speech… we shall fight on the beaches and so on…but we
shall never surrender. But the entire speech is a masterpiece, an
account of the lost battle of France -- almost a dispassionate
account in which he also brings himself to say that the Germans are
a brave race -- and when it reaches its climax one can feel the hair
rising on one's back.
Churchill was the son of a lord but
he had no private income and when not holding political office lived
all his life from the money he derived from his books and newspaper
writings. He lived the life of a highborn aristocrat but this was
sustained by his pen.
When Clement Attlee stepped down as
British prime minister he had to take to newspaper writing to
support himself. Harold Wilson had no private income. Lord Wavell as
viceroy of India had no house of his own in England and had to buy
one when he returned from India.
The current scandal over MP expenses
in Westminster tells an altogether different story but this is now
and that was then.
Ordinary times call for ordinary
leaders, leaders who are competent managers rather than
inspirational figures in the Churchill or Stalin mould. But in
Pakistan we are living through extraordinary times, with wars within
and menacing pressures outside, a situation calling for leadership
of a high calibre, to inspire the nation and summon it to action.
Criticism is easy and it is also easy
to give way to despair but we should not lose heart. Other nations
have been through worse times and while the weak have perished those
with some strength in them have emerged successful from their
trials. We have our weaknesses and failures but also our strengths
and successes. The ordeal we are going through was perhaps
necessary. We will be a better people once we pass this test.
Tailpiece: Consider Stalin's decision
not to evacuate Moscow and then consider the PML-N's decision to
have the by-elections in Rawalpindi and Lahore postponed because of
the law and order situation. Is this the way to fight terrorism? No
worse message could have been sent about the party's stewardship of
Punjab. Even if the threat of terrorism was a hundred times worse,
the elections should have gone ahead. Even now it is not too late to
make amends. A fresh application must be made to the Election
Commission and the elections should be held as scheduled. Or else we
might as well make our peace with Maulana Fazlullah and Baitullah
Mahsud.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com
The News: Friday, June 12, 2009 |
