With the sacking of an Ahmadiyya economist, Imran Khan has failed the first test of inclusive governance
If there was much trepidation about Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan giving into hardliners and their stranglehold on polity and the military, his latest decision to fire an Ahmadiyya economist tore his “Naya Pakistan” commitment asunder. Even the most hopeful among Pakistan liberals, who were latching on to the cosmetic changes that Khan had initiated while in office, are now accusing him of cowering to the religious right, which he had endorsed in the past too but was expected to negotiate adroitly once he had the mandate. What dashes hopes with a deafening thud is the fact that the country is on the brink of an economic crisis that may need an IMF bailout and the Princeton scholar Atif Mian, with established credentials as one of the world’s top 25 in line for the Nobel prize, was perhaps the best man to steer the country out of its intractable morass. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves are at record lows while it suffocates under external debt, most of it due to loans from China for the $62 billion CPEC. It was an insult to the country’s academia as two of Mian’s colleagues, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Imran Rasul, who were also appointed to the Khan-led economic advisory council, quit in protest over a move that prided religion over economics and mindless rant over proven capability. What is shocking is that Imran, who has so far been seen as educated, liberal, privileged and determined as a person and cricketer, completely appears to have sold himself to hawks for personal sustenance over political expediency. This rather tame cave-in on protecting minority rights means that the new regime may well turn out to be the most hardliner of them all and subsume the little dots of diversity that are still left in that country.
Even Pakistan’s founding father, MA Jinnah himself belonged to a minority Islamic sect and had from the very beginning assured Ahmadiyyas that they would be treated at par with any other Muslim sect, appointing his Foreign Minister from among them. Ahmadiyyas, when accommodated in Pakistan, have served top jobs in the Army, academia, arts and sciences. All that changed in the mid 1970s when they were proscribed as non-Muslims. Pakistan’s civil society, already compromised by years of military rule, has been virtually eroded by this move. And that doesn’t bode well for that country or India, which Imran is looking at for some economic solace. But with the terrorist machinery-related groups slowly steadying their power grip on our neighbour and its new PM parroting China as the cornerstone of neighbourly relations, it’s Purana Pakistan all over again.