One is never too young in Pakistan to be accused of ‘planning a murder, threatening police, and interfering in state affairs.’ Muhammad Musa Khan should have known better. He would have done, had he not been nine months old. To the apprehending police, his infancy was not excuse enough, his bottle of milk too lethal a weapon for him to escape being charged.

Having been fingerprinted, carried in his grandfather’s arms to court to make an appearance, and released on bail, Musa Khan has been allowed to return home where in time, when he is older, he will learn his ABC: A stands for arrest, B for Bail and C for conviction.

It could be argued that as Justice is always depicted blind, it cannot be expected to distinguish between the right and the wronged, to differentiate between young and old. But there is a reason why Justice is also shown as a woman. She personifies compassion. That explains why she never chose a career in the police.

If a nine month old child can be included as a defendant in the immutable First Information Report (FIR), and marriage with underage girls has been recommended by a constitutional body, then an argument could be developed for reducing the voting age in Pakistan from its present eighteen years to, say, birth. After all, the infant has an identity and a nationality from the moment of birth. What better way could there be of alerting a new-born into his/her responsibilities as a muslim than to recite the azan in one ear, and to civic responsibilities with an electoral number in the other?

A second suggestion that the Election Commission might like to consider is to expand the voting area to allow every Pakistani to have a say in the general elections held in Afghanistan and India. Think about it. In no part of the world except perhaps for Israel and Palestine - not in Europe, not in Africa, not in the Americas, not in South-east Asia, - do neighbouring countries figure so prominently in each other’s electoral dramas.  India, Afghanistan and Pakistan share an inordinate interest in each other’s politics.

There can be no better example of this than the Indian general election which has just begun its juggernaut journey towards New Delhi.  There was a time when political parties issued their election manifestos before canvassing began. In the current election, the party tipped to win the elections – the BJP – issued its manifesto the day before the first election booths opened. According to reports, BJP high command could not decide how much sulphurous saffron should be added to the mixture before Hindutva turned inflammable.

The 1998 Manifesto of the BJP put Hindutva up front in Chapter 2, where under the heading of ‘Cultural Nationalism’, it expressed its conviction that Hindutva had ‘immense potentiality to–re-energise this nation and discipline it to undertake the arduous task of nation-building.’ The Chapter ended with BJP’s commitment to ‘the construction of a magnificent Shri Ram Mandir at Ram Janmasthan in Ayodhya where a makeshift temple already exists,’ because ‘Shri Ram lies at the core of Indian consciousness.’

In the 2014 manifesto, Ram Mandir at Ayodhya remains a priority, but at the top of Cultural Heritage, where the BJP ‘reiterates its stand to explore all possibilities within the framework of the constitution to facilitate the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.’

The vexed problem of Jammu & Kashmir in 1998 had the BJP affirming ‘India’s unequivocal sovereignty over the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, including the areas under foreign occupations’. Sixteen years later, and after more than a decade in Opposition, the BJP stance has blurred into: ‘Jammu and Kashmir was, is and shall remain an integral part of the Union of India. The territorial integrity of India is inviolable.’   It pledges to abrogate Article 370 (that guaranteed Indian-held Jammu & Kashmir special status) and by definition regards the United Nations resolutions obsolete.  And Pakistan remains in 2014, as it did in 1998, guilty of ‘hostile interference’ and ‘supporting insurgent groups.’      

In another month, there will be new faces in government in both New Delhi and in Kabul, but it is unlikely there will be new policies. But then, Pakistan deserves none. By negotiating with the TTP, the government has reduced itself to parity with anti-state terrorists. By releasing imprisoned insurgents without demanding the return of political captives like the sons of a slain Governor Punjab and a former prime minister (both happened to belong to the PPP), it has betrayed a partisanship. And by pursuing without vigour an Oedipal trial of a former Chief of Army Staff, it has exposed its judicial flaccidity.   

Perhaps the canny old lady was right. She refused to vote in elections because she felt it merely encouraged politicians.

© F.S. AIJAZUDDIN

[DAWN, 10 April 2014]