The
Disappearing Act Of A
Character Called Sukhi Lala
By Jawed Naqvi
04 June, 2007
The Dawn
Unlike
India, where it is difficult to tell these days when a Congress-led
coalition has paved the way for a BJP led alliance and vice versa, political
groups in Pakistan seem to have a lacerating relationship. The army,
the mullahs, the PPP and Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League are complemented
in their hostile aloofness towards each other by a marked regional fervour
of the Baloch, the Pashtuns, the Punjabis, and the Sindhis, with the
MQM bringing up a vengeful tail. Also, unlike India, where the media
has allowed itself to follow a consensus on most key issues, both foreign
and domestic, the absence of a common perspective on most key issues
in Pakistan makes it difficult, perhaps even impossible, for the media
to pursue a consensus simply because it is just not there at the political
level.
Journalists are creatures
of their politics and it is a bit of a myth that they pursue 'objectivity',
if such a creature truly exists, beyond a reasonable flexibility around
their given ideals. To the Indian eye, therefore, the relatively unbending
Pakistani media is more akin to the regional media in India, say like
Tamil Nadu, where the political contradictions are actually played out
more nakedly, and viciously. In Uttar Pradesh, Sahara TV, aligned with
Mulayam Singh Yadav, is unlikely to present his successor, Ms Mayawati
in fair light. Such antagonisms are a fact in practically every state.
But at the federal level
all this changes quite magically. The Left Front's support for the Congress,
despite their bitter feud in West Bengal, is a case in point.
Violent contradictions at
the state level and a consensual political platform at the federal level
define Indian politics and, in a sense, the media too. When a newspaper
has switched sides, from supporting the BJP to brazenly idolising the
Congress, or in rare cases when a newspaper or a TV channel has shifted
from a left-liberal corner to the hard-line centre, or from the right
to the centre and back again to its original posture, is difficult to
tell. I asked a sagacious uncle how senior journalists who would swear
by Atal Behari Vajpayee when he was prime minister had switched their
loyalty to Manmohan Singh. A notable example, though not the only one,
is Manmohan Singh's media adviser who once had described Vajpayee as
a latter day Nehru.
The uncle's reply was in
Urdu and it deserves to be recorded accurately. "Ye log badalte
nahi hain beta, ye log hotey hi aise hain." (These people do not
change, son. They just happen to be made this way.) This is not to say
that politicians in Pakistan do not switch sides or that journalists
do not change political corners. In fact, even sitting in far away Delhi
one can make out that the present ruling party in Pakistan has generously
poached people from different ideological corners. In this malleability
there is hardly any difference between an Indian ruling coalition, be
it led by the Congress or the BJP, and the current coalition of poached
leaders that is ruling Pakistan. In fact, it seems easier for people
to become a notable figure in a rival party before making a transition
to the current one.
Take Shankar Singh Vaghela
for example, who heads the Congress party's strategy in Gujarat. He
is a former leader of the RSS/BJP stock. He switched sides to spite
the current state chief minister Narendra Modi. Well-known ideologue
of the intellectual right Sudheendra Kulkarni came to the BJP from a
communist corner. Devi Prasad Tripathi was in the RSS stable before
he became a senior member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist. He
even went to jail as a comrade during Indira Gandhi's emergency rule.
It is another matter that Tripathi later joined the same Congress that
once threw him into prison. He is currently a leader of the breakaway
National Congress Party. Likewise with the BJP. It has senior leaders,
like Najma Heptullah, who once adorned the Congress.
So how has India, at least
to the naked eye, evolved a seemingly consensual (some would say incestuous)
politics as opposed to Pakistan, or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka —
the list can be easily extended to virtually all the South Asian countries
because political rivalries there are like a fight unto death?
The answer perhaps lies in
India's case in the consensus of Sukhi Lala. Let me explain this idiom.
In the early days of the Indian cinema, in the 1940s, 50s and to an
extent up to the 1960s, the arch villain in a movie was the avaricious
moneylender who wreaked havoc on innocent village folks with his greed.
In the classic Do Bigha Zameen and the magnum opus Mother India, the
forced alienation of the peasant from his land by the moneylender was
widely appreciated theme that reflected a political and economic reality
of the newly independent nation. Similar themes were also the burden
of the literature of that period, Prem Chand being the best recognised
of the campaigners who highlighted rural distress and exploitation.
In Mother India, the nasty
moneylender was called Sukhi Lala, who stole the land from an illiterate
peasant family by fudging records of a loan he had once advanced to
the peasant family's head. Over a period of time the villain mutated
from moneylender into a gambler who played 'satta', popular pejorative
for the stock market. With time this moneylender-satta-player duo gave
way to the gun-toting smuggler and the rise of the underworld don. More
recently Indian cinema has created the ubiquitous 'terrorist' as the
chief villain who sports a beard and speaks like a Pathan or a Kashmiri.
At some point, with the rise of the non-resident Indians' profile in
the affairs of the home country, the remaining vestiges of Sukhi Lala
disappeared. In fact in a popular genre of current cinema the villain
himself has vanished. In fact, in the Guru, released some months ago,
which is supposed to be a story based on the life of a powerful Indian
tycoon, you would notice that the villain Sukhi Lala has mutated into
a hero.
It is this Sukhi Lala who
supports Narendra Modi in Gujarat as the model chief minister, then
strikes a deal for various industrial projects with the communists in
West Bengal. He controls the politics of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana that
surround Delhi. He has his liaison officers masquerading as party apparatchiks
in the Congress, BJP and most regional parties. Therefore, even though
Sukhi Lala of Mother India is still going about his business, plundering
economically vulnerable village folk, in his new avatar he is no longer
regarded as a villain but the harbinger of a world order of which India
would be an integral part.
As I read the news report
about the proposed censorship by the Cable Operators Association of
Pakistan (CAP) of politically unsavoury news telecasts, it reminded
me of the delicate balancing act that Sukhi Lala everywhere has to perform
before he is in any position to swamp the society.
"We have decided that
we'll not become part of any campaign which goes against the armed forces,
judiciary and integrity of Pakistan and will virtually boycott the channels,
which indulge in such acts," said CAP chairman Khalid Shaikh at
the Karachi Press Club. Now we all know that it would require daunting
political calisthenics for anyone at this point in time to defend the
judiciary in Pakistan without offending the army and vice versa. But
once this consensus is achieved, as Mr Shaikh is striving hard to put
together, Pakistan may go India's way.
The once evocative slogan
of Roti, Kapda Aur Makan would be muffled by its own former patrons.
And Sukhi Lala, the quick change artist that he is, is waiting for precisely
this moment.
[email protected]
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.