SPOT ON!
Intergenerational tragedy, poverty and exploitation have been the norm in Pakistan. Since its creation in 1947. And actually predate Pakistan’s emergence in India as we all know.
When the British colonialists left, having torn asunder the Indian subcontinent in the most savage way and raped and stripped it of whatever wealth they could squeeze from us, the legacy they left was a unique class of ‘babus,’ brown people trained in servitude and inferiority, educated in institutions which catered only to them. They became the inheritors of Pakistan.
Ingenious. Some of course were allowed into Oxford and Cambridge, the fake ‘sahibs’ forever beholden to the British empire. Collaborators. Traitors to their own people.
Jinnah, Nehru and Gandhi defied his royal highness and had the courage and wisdom to recognize how the the British wielded divide and rule as a most effective method to control India. But intolerance was now a beast unchained. Too late. Muslim turned on Hindu, Sikh turned on Muslim and so on.
Knighted with Sirs, collaborators were rewarded with vast swathes of agricultural lands. And thus was put in place a new feudal system which perseveres to this day in Pakistan.
From my vantage point, Churchill was a white supremacist who lost no opportunity to sneer at us little brown people, and not a hero. Did he singlehandedly defeat Hitler? Let’s give America its due. And Russia etc etc. Mountbatten was a mediocre servant of the Empire. I derive some satisfaction from the fact that Edwina his wife, openly had the hots for Nehru!
Serfdom and bonded labor are alive and kicking and we all turn a blind eye to it. Between army, feudalism, religion and an upstart bureaucracy, how could we expect Pakistan to proceed up the path of modernity? though it clearly was created as a secular state, the narrative was hijacked by Muslim ambitions. Pakistan also inherited a shadow of the strict Hindu caste system still so powerful in India.
India had the foresight to disband princely states and neutralize the power of feudals. It’s a separate matter that today we have a Modi in India steeped in bigotry and Hindu supremacy. But India still retains footholds in democratic institutions. Fascism is a worldwide trend. Did Trump let the genie out of the bottle and both he and Modi partook of genie delights? That’s another story.
My point is, we Americans scoffed and laughed at ‘third world countries.’ Let me ask you, “Intergenerational tragedy, poverty and exploitation…” has it been any different in America?
