The first wife syndrome

Pakistan won't develop as a country, become a stable member of world comity unless it sheds its India-centric policy

When I was a kid and the invasion of satellite and cable television had yet to happen, the only sources of television entertainment were either the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) or beginning in the early 1990s, a private channel called NTM. Being near the border, our antenna could also catch the Indian state-run channel Doordarshan (DD). Therefore, every weekend our mainstay entertainment was watching films on either PTV or DD. A number of these films were based on social issues and I grew up acutely aware of the adverse effects of societal problems. One oft-repeated social issue was the question of a man marrying more than one wife. While in Islam, a man can marry up to four wives at any one time, in Pakistan this practice was, and is, considered culturally taboo. The public scandal caused by former prime minister Bogra’s second marriage obliquely led to the stipulation that the husband must get the written consent of the first wife before contracting a second marriage, yet the complications of the ‘second wife’— ‘doosri biwi’ — continued. Film after film showcased how the first wife felt neglected, dejected, and even abused after the coming in of the second. Usually, the first wife was shown to be older, old-fashioned and not as good looking as the second one to present an even starker difference. The point was, of course, that the husband was, in fact, a cruel man because he had left the faithful first wife forlorn and gone after the charms of the second one, which were at best fleeting.

The best simple explanation of the relationship between Pakistan and the US is the analogy of the first wife and the husband. Pakistan is the faithful first wife, who is always ready to do her master’s bidding, but now the evil husband — the US — has been charmed by the shining India of Modi, the wicked second wife, and does not care about the first one. Anyone watching Pakistani news channels — and they are numerous — during the visit of the US president to India would be convinced of this reality. Programme after programme discussed how shameful it was for Pakistan that the American president was visiting India, but not Pakistan. Several pundits, including the ex-governor of Punjab Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar, opined that the fact that Obama did not visit Pakistan was a foreign policy “failure”. Many TV shows trashed the Nawaz Sharif government for this debacle and demanded its resignation. Even the terminology we use to explain our relationship with the US gives a dejected first wife feeling. We feel ‘betrayed’ by America time and again despite having done its bidding, but it has not been ‘faithful’ to us. Quite simply, it just sounds like a bad marriage.

Now imagine another scenario: that of President Obama visiting France but not Germany. Imagine German Chancellor Angela Merkel being blasted on all TV channels for not making a US president’s visit possible. Sounds ridiculous? It does indeed to me.

Simply put: Pakistan will not develop as a country and become a stable member of the world comity unless it sheds its India-centric foreign (and even domestic) policy. None of India’s neighbours do it to the extent we do it, and unless we stop obsessing about India all the time, we will never move on. Obsession with India over everything has less to do with our real and imagined threat from India, and more to do with the fact that we have yet to move on from the ‘Partition moment’ and develop an independent identity, which is not tied to India behaving in a particular manner. If a lot of our actions are just reactions to India, and not our independent decisions, we will always be beholden to India and its behaviour. For a country so concerned about its ‘sovereignty’ and ‘integrity’, I am surprised that we are not ashamed of this attitude of ours. The news from India is also not encouraging from our perspective on this count. Since the coming in of the Modi Sarkar, the government has practically decided to ignore Pakistan, and wants little to do with us. Secondly, as evident during Obama’s visit, India is no longer ‘trying’ to become a regional power. Modi’s mannerism and approach to the visit clearly showed that India now assumes that it is a regional power, and that it is now vying for world power and influence. This ‘ignore Pakistan’ policy and ‘moving on’ from regional power games will also have implications for Pakistan and in fact make Pakistan’s stance even more sad and, dare I say, pathetic.

So shall we stop being the miserable first wife of the US and a country obsessed with India, and grow up and develop our country on a sounder, more pragmatic basis?

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th,  2015.

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