The Big Story: No Khan do

Pakistan’s elections, held on Wednesday, were riven with controversy. There are widespread allegations that the country’s army had come down heavily against the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and supported Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf. On Thursday, Khan declared himself the winner.

Khan, a national hero for leading his country to a cricket world cup win in 1992, fought on a troublingly conservative platform. He supported the further marginalisation of the members of the Ahmedi sect and backed Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law, which is frequently used to attack the country’s religious minorities. His party has earlier ruled the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Khan’s support for pro-Taliban groups had earned him the nickname “Taliban Khan” from his critics.

The election was shot through with anti-India rhetoric with the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif accused of being a bit too friendly with India – a dog whistle that carried damning accusations of selling out to the enemy.

In this first press conference after the election, Khan on Thursday declared that India and Pakistan should meet for talks. This is welcome but the anti-India rhetoric of the election campaign cannot be ignored. Nor can the perception that the Army is behind Khan’s win. One of the key reasons that the Army set itself against the Sharifs were their overtures to India.

This truculence from the Pakistan side is compounded by India’s own belligerent domestic rhetoric with respect to its western neighbour. Pakistan figured prominently during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and even state elections after that as a rhetorical point used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to paint its opponents as lesser patriots. This has been continued even while the BJP has been in power, with Opposition leaders often being told to “go to Pakistan”. Even the Opposition has joined in this race to the bottom: the Congress taunted Modi earlier this month by asking him about his “dear friend” Nawaz Sharif, referring to the two prime ministers meeting in 2015.

As Lok Sabha elections approach in India, this anti-Pakistan rhetoric will only become sharper, since any side that even hints at peace runs the risk of being branded unpatriotic. Add that to Khan’s election and the sharp rise of conservatism in Pakistan and the result will probably be a long wait for anyone expecting a normalisation of relations between the two subcontinental twins.

The Big Scroll

Haroon Khalid explains how anti-India rhetoric played a role in the Pakistan elections

Punditry

  • The simplest way to deal with the Pakistan elections is to accept the outcome as being fair, even when we know that they were not entirely so, writes Manoj Joshi in the Economic Times.
  • The amendments being proposed to the Right to Information Act will structurally weaken and nullify the entire law, argue Nikhil Dey, Bhupender Yadav and Bimal Julka in the Hindu.
  • New Delhi’s Indian Ocean woes aren’t confined to Sri Lanka, explains Abhijit Singh in the Hindustan Times.

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Don’t Miss

In Meghalaya, Khasi women who marry non-Khasis may lose Scheduled Tribe status and benefits, reports Arunach Saikia.

“However, the Khasi council’s chief executive member Hispreaching Son Shylla, who introduced the Bill, defended it, insisting that it was a long-pending initiative to ‘save the tiny Khasi tribe that is on the very verge of extinction’. Shylla said, ‘Inter-community marriages have eroded the basic structure of the Khasi society. Many outsiders marry Khasi women only to bypass all legal safeguards that protect the tribal society. This is about our existence.’

Non-Khasi men, Shylla alleged, used marriage as a ‘multipurpose certificate’ to avail of benefits accorded by the Constitution to tribal people. Shylla was also dismissive of the opposition to the Bill. ‘We don’t need the opinion of women who feel ashamed to be Khasis and think of themselves as too forward,’ he said.”