shiv wrote:Baikul wrote:
A while ago- don't have so many posts on BR so it should not be hard to find- I'd proposed the filter of (IIRC) 'Rejection and Divorce' for understanding the actions of a Pakistani individual, group, caste, sect, organization or even the entire nation state.
<snip>
Whereas other healthier cultures also 'accept and assimilate' apart from 'rejecting and divorcing', Pakistan and Pakistanis can only do the latter.
I have found this framework to be useful if one wants to predict how they will react over a period of time to pretty much anything.
+1
"Rejection and Divorce"
That was one heck of an insightful post - I need to burn those words into my memory - "rejection and divorce" because that is exactly how Pakis have behaved. When I think about it, the explanation rejection and divorce is a far more lucid explanation of Pakistani actions than what Stephen Cohen acknowledged " Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face"
What bothers me is the following. What exactly was the factor that made a series of Pakistani leaders, Paki movers and shakers to carry exactly this attitude forward for over six decades. Surely - somehow, somewhere, someone should have had the brains to figure out that rejection and divorce from parts of yourself cannot be beneficial. You only get smaller, not bigger,
There is this mysterious concept of "Pakistaniyat" - the "idea of Pakistan". A Paki on DFI got angry when I mocked that idea but the idea itself is so vague, I cannot help suspecting that this Paki rejection and divorce are inextricably linked to the idea of Pakistan. The Idea of Pakistan seems to have the following components
- Moral, legal, physical and cultural superiority over Hindus/India
- God given right to rule
- Islam
- An strange idea that Allah will somehow come to their aid every time no matter what
I have put Islam lower on the list because Islam does not appear to be the first priority. Even Islam and Muslims will be killed and rejected if they deviate from the first two ideals.
All this classifying is all very well - but how come no Pakistani figured out that this game is a dead end?
Maybe Pakis fooled themselves into thinking that US aid and US support will get them India. I tink one statement stand out in my mind
hans ke liye Pakistan. Lar ke lenge Hindustan
roughly translatable as:
We laughed while we got Pakistan. We will fight and get India
If we are going to use the "rejection and divorce" metaphor to explain Pakistan, then we have to note that it is a very dysfunctional and clingy kind of divorce we are talking about. When a person divorces a spouse, he or she may go about their personal life in a normal, healthy way after a period of adjustment to the change. That's a healthy kind of divorce. The other kind of divorce is a tantrum and a refusal to even acknowledge that there is a mutual responsibility to work together and manage differences. In a divorce like that, the divorcing partner doesn't just peacefully "leave", he or she remains obsessed with everything the divorced ex-partner does, one moment badmouthing them, another moment trying to harm them, all the while demanding that the divorced partner somehow continue to "take care" of the divorcing partner, in a one-way street demand for affection.
In the first kind of divorce, children have a good chance of growing up more or less normal, whereas the second kind is a factory for making problem children who grow up into problem adults, thus perpetuating the dysfunctional irresponsible DNA across generations.
The second kind of divorce describes Pakistan's attitude towards India. It is an almost intractable situation, one thing the divorced partner is advised to do is to not accept the role that the divorcing partner has written out for them, out of old habit, "concern for children", or whatever, instead just take a firm line on the separation, pushing away all overtures and attempts to establish a relationship and make claims on the divorced partner's affection etc.
Stepping outside the metaphor, what keeps TSP going in a material sense is USA's aid and support; but what keeps it up psychologically and spiritually is India's willingness to act as the dharma-patni who has been divorced by a bad-character scoundrel of a husband, but who willingly and patiently plays a supportive role--albeit sometimes grudgingly, albeit reacting harshly at times--that the scoundrel has written out for her. Compare the number of times Indian voices say, "a strong and powerful Pakistan is in India's best interests" with the number of times Pakistani voices say, "a strong and powerful India is in Pakistan's best interests" to see what I mean.
And shiv, as long as India continues to play its part in this one-sided sick romance, it is not a dead-end for Pakistan, and that is why it is able to keep up the game indefinitely--it has played it for nearly 70 years, and the board has not changed significantly; Pakistan continues to rack up emotional / psychological sustenance points at a pace that maybe slow, but still steady.
The way to put an end to the beast is to take away the psychological support, and yes "love", that India is providing for Pakistan. To withdraw support in this way is a long way from happening, since India is caught deep in the throes of this dysfunctional and, for India, harmful and costly, relationship.
The risk is that, if Pakistan ever gets psychologically hollowed out by India's full and complete rejection and loses all hope, will it despair enough to start a nuclear war? I personally think the survival instinct is too strong for that to happen realistically. Also, as the silly and pathetic attempt to boost their "image" shows, Pakis are, as a class, low-down creatures who will talk big, but only aspire to nothing more than crumbs of other people's dross. That's not the psychology of people who, like mighty Samson, will bring down the temple on themselves and their enemies.
It will take time to change India's attitude towards Pakistan, away from today's knee-jerk "love" to something that is not quite hate, but utter indifference and a desire to be as far away as possible from Pakistan, emotionally speaking. But this time period can be used to work out how to engineer and manage the psychological collapse of Pakistan.