It all happened the other day before our eyes, almost ? on television, on news pages. General Pervez Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif, in a counter-coup in 1999, and then on he reigned variously, changing garb and improvising title, cramping the constitution, suborning the judiciary, till he stepped down in August 2008 on no-reprisal condition. In between the country went through a lot, the subcontinent saw a good deal of the jaunty General.
Post-retirement, Musharraf is not quite gone, though in political recession. He pops in now and then, predictably against the canvas of Indo-Pak relations. In the wake of the Mumbai attacks, he blustered on PTV: ?We haven?t put on bangles around our hands?? And then last month, when the leaderships of the two countries were trying to thaw bilaterals out, we saw him bloviate on TV about his near achievements in the subcontinent?s history.
Such eel-like appearances make it difficult to decide whether this man has been finally consigned to the loft of history. Murtaza Razvi?s book, Musharraf: The Years in Power, now ferrets him out of that loft full scale. The eight years Musharraf was in power were trying years both for him and for Pakistan. In this republic manque, democratic aspiration has bobbed up and down. Which is how the General came to issue rant about saving his watan from corrupt politicians. The account of the eight years starts with a variation on this praetorian proclivity of the military. Musharraf, it says, was an ?accidental dictator? in a chapter describing the counter-coup drama staged for most part on PTV premises. A serio-comic aside to that remarkably bloodless coup emerges from the dilemma and plight of the gatekeeper, who finally flees the gate and hides behind a tree near by, unable to cope with conflicting commands and shifting control, from afternoon till 8 pm, of Pakistan?s national television.
Musharraf tried turning a few things around in an Islamic society badly radicalised by Zia ul Haq. With some he somewhat succeeded: greater freedom to the media, lifting curbs on women in the cultural sphere, and the setting up of National Academy of Performing Arts. The reform hum got jangled when he proposed changes in the pernicious Hudood Ordinances of 1979, which effectively damns a rape victim. The move was seen as an endorsement of free sex, which stumped the President. By then the country was getting back its political reflexes. The book makes use of testimonials to build a composite picture of the General and his regime. Razvi?s research takes him to public men and retired army personnel of stature. Interviews of them feed the pages liberally. What were those eight years under the General like? Very eventful, often tumultuous. No two opinions about that, but how is Musharraf evaluated? With two unlike sets of opinion on the General juxtaposed at the outset ? some saying he was a moderate and a clean man, others running him down for being a usurper of power devoid of any higher motives ? the verdict is nearly eternally deferred. Through this deferral the narrative is threaded.
Musharraf was an isolated man in his last months in power, we are told. What of his downfall? Razvi doesn?t answer that with a straight face. The question of downfall becomes a kind of leit motif in the book. In a chapter (?Dynamic and Scheming?) that rests on an interview of Lt Gen. (retd) Moinuddin Haider, a former governor of Sindh, the book moves on to a more muscular critique of the regime. It eviscerates Musharraf?s doctrine of ?enlightened moderation? and records Haider?s redemptive recipe to a general presiding over a quasi-democratic regime, guided by expediency and often caught in the slipstream of ambivalence.
It is the take of a senior lawyer and writer, Abid Hasan Minto, that stabilises an otherwise restive narrative: ?He [Musharraf] was the first dictator who openly and publicly came out with some kind of a liberal attitude. The liberalism? was not only in social attitudes but also in politics itself.? ?But such modern thinking, if it is not part of a democratic set-up, goes to the back seat under an arbitrary rule based on authoritarianism,? Minto closes his appraisal magisterially.
Razvi?s may not be the best of read in terms of seamless narrative. It?s a good work nevertheless on Pakistan, not just on its recent dictator.