Egypt, Mubarak ho!

In the subcontinent, we’ve become far too pragmatic, dining out with the strong and powerful and disdaining the weak.

On a visit to the Suez Canal some years ago, I remember asking my tour guide about Mubarak. What do you say about him, how come Egypt doesn’t have any real elections? Shhh, he said, waving me to the side of the boat on which we stood, don’t talk so loudly about the president!

Well, the Egyptians have reclaimed their history, their geography and their present. It was almost hilarious to watch Alpesh Patel, a private investor and stock market pundit on BBC on the morning of February 11, pronouncing how it was not in the interest of Western powers that radical change should take place in the Middle East. What was happening in Egypt was not real democracy, said Mr Patel, how could a few hundred thousand protestors decide the fate of a country in the absence of even an election?

Mr Patel is the kind of person we call a ‘coconut’ in India — brown on the outside, white on the inside. Perhaps it’s the Suez gene or the ghost of Anthony Eden that collectively resides in the British subconscious, which allowed its elite to pay lip service to democracy but emphatically protect its business interest. Perhaps this comes naturally to Mr Patel, a financial analyst and true to the trading caste of his Indian Gujrati forbears.

Why single out Britain for its two-faced reaction to Egypt? The subcontinent, whose every muscle and sinew is charged with the experience of non-violent protest in the face of the fully-armed enemy, failed to discharge its own moral, high ground in supporting the Egyptians in their hour of crisis as well as its emergence from the glass chrysalis.

Pre-1947, Indians learnt the value of civil disobedience. You see in Attenborough’s Gandhi, how they resisted the blows and the bullets of the British police, simply by assembling and massing in the squares and refusing to move, in defence of their right to dignity.

Isn’t that exactly what the Egyptians did over the last two weeks? In Tahrir Square and in the port city of Alexandria, the site of what once was the world’s largest library, the Egyptians protested with vehemence but without recrimination. In Cairo, the people linked their arms to protect the Egyptian museum from vandals and Mubarak’s secret police. Not since the Indian struggle for independence has the world seen anything like it.

The Egyptians have redeemed us all. Here in the subcontinent, we’ve become far too pragmatic, dining out with the strong and the powerful and disdaining the weak.

The real work begins now, say the pragmatists. Sure, but for now let’s revel in the Times of India headline this morning: Egypt, Mubarak ho!

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2011.