Justice, Power, and Truth

I checked the name index of Amartya Sen’s book (The Idea of Justice) for Foucault and found him missing. Let me explain why I found that surprising.

As mentioned earlier, Sen contrasts two approaches to social justice – the search for a perfectly just society versus the alternative of making existing society less unjust. These perspectives are given different labels – ‘arrangement-focused’ versus ‘realization focused’ or niti versus nyaya. The implication of the contrast is pithily summarized by an endorsement on the book’s back cover: “The Idea of Justice gives us a political philosophy that is dedicated to the reduction of injustice on Earth rather than to the creation of ideally just castles in the air.”

In terms of lineage, the arrangement-focused perspective is said to derive from the social contract formulation of Thomas Hobbes via Locke, Rousseau and Kant to John Rawls (A Theory of Justice) in our own times. The realization-focused perspective is traced from Adam Smith via Bentham, Marx and John Stuart Mill to Amartya Sen himself.

This would be fine if we were to accept the two perspectives as mutually exclusive and were asked to make a choice between them, especially when the choice is so starkly posed – reducing injustice on Earth versus creating ideally just castles in the air.

But what if we contend that the perspectives are not mutually exclusive – indeed that they overlap. Recall the characterization of niti and nyaya: the former relates to the institutional arrangements and behavioral norms whereas the latter is concerned with what emerges and how, and in particular the lives that people are actually able to lead. What if we ask: Do the arrangements that exist have anything to do with what emerges and the lives that people are actually able to lead? Or, how are niti and nyaya related?

This is where Foucault becomes relevant because Foucault is also the exact opposite of Hobbes but in a way quite distinct from the realization-focused perspective. The position Foucault takes is that it is not an ideal arrangement that will determine the lives that people would be able to lead. On the contrary, the causality is reversed – the lives that people are able to lead tell us something about the way the arrangements are structured. In other words, nyaya is a manifestation of niti.

This seems to take us away from the realization-focused approach back to the arrangement-focused approach except that the arrangement-focused approach originating with Hobbes is devoid of any notion of power. And this is what Foucault adds to the analysis – in his now well-known formulation what happens at the fingertips is a function of the power that is situated in the head.

One implication of this is that if we try to reduce an injustice in society without paying attention to the social or political arrangements that might be its cause, the injustice could very well emerge in a different form. This makes both realization-focused and arrangement-focused approaches relevant at the same time. If, for example, we wish to reduce the burdens of gender discrimination we would need to address existing instances of such discrimination (e.g., starting women-only trains to reduce harassment of women in public transport) while targeting the institution of patriarchy at the same time.

This is easier said than done and it is here that the real contribution of Foucault becomes relevant. Power not only determines what happens at the fingertips, it also determines how we see and interpret what happens at the fingertips – ‘power’ shapes ‘truth’ and the nature of the public discourse that we rely on to reduce injustice in society. Note how many voices rise up to defend the veiling of women as soon as attempts are made to eliminate that dimension of gender discrimination – patriarchy is accepted as normal, as part of some divinely ordained order of things.

Foucault has many examples of how power works to shape ‘truth’ and behavior. For example, he might ask how it is that in an age where so much is made of individuality, everyone rushes out to buy the same things and wear the same fashions? What kind of power does this common behavior at the fingertips reveal? Those who strive to reduce injustice have to contend with how those efforts are portrayed by the media – what really does “All the news that’s fit to print” mean and what does it reflect?

When we take Rawls, Sen and Foucault together we realize what we are up against in attempting to reduce injustice in our societies and why injustice is so persistent. Of course, this should not deter us from taking on the task we have set for ourselves in identifying what we consider the ten most unacceptable things in South Asia today.

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Sen’s Idea of Justice: A Puzzle?

I started reading Amartya Sen’s latest book The Idea of Justice in which he suggests we reduce injustice in the world we live in rather than attempt to create an ideally just world – he characterizes the contrasting perspectives as ‘realization-focused’ versus ‘arrangement-focused’ approaches to justice. For South Asians, the parallels are two different concepts of justice from early Indian jurisprudence – niti and nyaya. The former relates to ‘organizational propriety as well as behavioral correctness’ whereas the latter is concerned with ‘what emerges and how, and in particular the lives that people are actually able to lead.’

The distinctions, and Professor Sen’s preference, are quite clear and one can agree or disagree with his choice. Here I am concerned with the example that Sen uses to motivate his argument and to explain why I find it puzzling. I would like readers to reflect on the example and to comment on its appropriateness.

Sen uses an illustration called ‘Three Children and a Flute’ to make the point that it is not possible to find an unambiguous principle of justice that everyone can agree upon. The illustration asks the reader to decide which of three children – Anne, Bob and Carla – should get a flute about which they are quarreling. Anne claims the flute on the ground that only she knows how to play it; Bob on the ground that he is the only one among the three who is so poor that he has no toys of his own; Carla on the ground that she has been working diligently for many months to make the flute with her own labor. None of the individual claims are contested.

The argument Sen makes is that these are competing claims for justice and that there are no obvious reasons for preferring any one over the others:

The general point here is that it is not easy to brush aside as foundationless any one of the claims based respectively on the pursuit of human fulfillment, or removal of poverty, or entitlement to enjoy the products of one’s own labor. The different resolutions all have serious arguments in support of them, and we may not be able to identify, without some arbitrariness, any of the alternative arguments as being the one that must invariably prevail.

What puzzles me is the following: Why does Sen pose this problem in terms of an issue of justice? To me it comes across much more as a problem of distribution that is made complex by the fact that we need to allocate one discrete commodity among three contenders. It is this discreteness of the commodity that turns the problem into one of choice, which then calls for a principle to govern that choice.

It is not clear to me why we should have our hands tied by the discreteness of the flute. If we relax this artificially imposed constraint we could consider a number of other solutions to the problem. For example, the flute could be sold and the proceeds distributed amongst the three claimants. This would not resolve the problem completely – Sen would surely ask for the principle that would govern the distribution of the proceeds – but it would certainly make the solution more tractable.

But even the limitation of discreteness need not preclude alternative solutions. The three contenders could agree that in the absence of any prior claims or rights, a just solution could be a fair lottery. Or they could agree on a cooperative solution in which each would get to keep the flute for a period of time with the order of the rotation determined by a fair lottery.

My argument is that this is not an issue of justice since no manifest injustice has been done to any of the three individuals. It is a simpler problem of distribution and it seems possible to find a cooperative solution if we do away with the stumbling block of the discreteness of the flute either by converting it into a divisible commodity (money) or by dividing its use over time. Once we do that we might even be able to find a single principle of fairness, e.g., egalitarianism, to govern the allocation of the divisible commodity. (This need not be the most efficient allocation. The more ambitious might try for allocations that make each claimant equally happy or maximize total happiness but these would again open up the debate over the merits of rival claims.)

I even do not see how the nature of prior claims, a dimension Professor Sen has ignored in his illustration, adds to the complexity of the problem. If Carla has made the flute and owns it, the other two have no claim to it. If Carla made the flute as a gift for the father who has left it as an inheritance, either the father’s will or the rules of inheritance would govern the allocation. Such rules vary across societies but in general have legitimacy amongst members of a society or there are accepted rules to resolve disagreements.

My question is as follows: Did Professor Sen choose a good illustration to motivate his argument? Should he have specified the source of the quarrel amongst the claimants? Is some prior information necessary to understand the context of the problem and its relevance to justice?

See Ten Unacceptable Things for our ongoing exercise based on Professor Sen’s suggestion.

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To Whom Does India Belong?

Some recent comments have made me reflect on this question. I am intrigued by the notion that someone can think of India as belonging to its religious majority. I am going to argue that such thinking is arbitrary, inconsistent, anachronistic, and schizophrenic. It is also a vocabulary that is entirely unhelpful in advancing us to a better and more secure future.

It is arbitrary because there is no logical reason for using religion as the characteristic by which a majority is determined. Why couldn’t one say that India belongs to men because there are more men than women in India? Or that India belongs to Hindi speakers, or to peasants, or to the lower castes? No case can be made that accords primacy to religion over all these other dimensions that can also separate a population into a majority and a minority.

It is inconsistent because if such logic can be applied to India there is no reason that it cannot be applied to a part of India. How can one argue that India belongs to its majority community but Maharashtra does not belong to its majority community? One would be forced to concede the validity of Bal Thackeray’s argument.

It is anachronistic because it belongs to an age when tribes claimed ownership of particular pieces of land and fought over them. If India belongs to a majority, however defined, then by definition the residual group, no matter how long it has resided in India, is a guest at best and an intruder at worst. Such a characterization is not compatible with the norms of our time.

It is schizophrenic because it reflects a mind that has accepted the structure of a modern nation-state on the one hand but continues to exhibit a pre-modern mental frame defined by all sorts of divisions between people who inhabit that nation-state.

I have been consistently arguing the case that South Asia does indeed suffer from this schizophrenia. It has borrowed ‘modern’ forms like the nation-state and democratic governance but both its elites and its masses remain infused with the ethos of a monarchy. The elites continue to think of themselves as above the law and entitled to dynastic rule and the masses continue to look upon the rulers, whoever they may be, as their mata-pitas.

If the countries of South Asia are to be modern nation-states, South Asians would have to abandon such archaic notions as someone owning a country. There are no majorities and minorities in modern, democratic, and secular nation-states. Everyone who is granted citizenship by the Indian state is an Indian with equal rights; an Indian – nothing more, nothing less. This is not to say that Indians stop being Bengalis or Tamils or Brahmins or Sikhs but that these distinctions remain markers of culture and have no bearing on differential ownership of India or privileged entitlement to rights simply by virtue of numerical counts. The fact that there may be more Bengalis than Assamese has no bearing on anything in a modern nation-state.

And if there are people in India who do not wish to be Indian, Indians would have to find a way to resolve that dilemma just as Spain has to find a solution to the dilemma of those Basques who do not wish to be citizens of Spain. This is true not just for India but also for Pakistan and Sri Lanka, at the very least.

How we relate to each other is a function of the vocabulary we employ. We cannot continue to dwell in the past and refer to each other as Aryans and Dravidians, Hindus and Muslims, Mughals and Rajputs, Sinhalese and Tamils, Bengalis and Biharis, etc., etc.  Nor can we undo the past. If we wish to move forward with the times we have to employ the vocabulary of the times. In South Asia, we have to deal with each other as Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalese, Bhutanese, and Maldivians.

The welfare of South Asians will be enhanced by cooperation between the countries of South Asia and will be hurt by conflict among them. This may strike some as fanciful but an essential step towards that cooperation may the choice of the terms we use for each other. It may be how we converse with each other that would have the most impact on our future.

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Burqa: Principle, Prejudice and Preference

What is the difference between the yarmulke and the burqa besides the fact that one is minimally small and the other is maximally large?

By now the controversy over the burqa is well known. In France, President Sarkozy has said: “The burqa is not a religious sign. It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement… It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic…. In our country we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity.”

In Cairo, President Obama has said: “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal…. and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice.”

I am going to set these remarks against the backdrop of Bertrand Russell’s observations on the tyranny of the majority (from Political Ideals, 1917) where he discusses “matters of passionate interest to certain sections of the community, but of very little interest to the great majority. If they are decided according to the wishes of the numerical majority, the intense desires of a minority will be overborne by the very slight and uninformed whims of the indifferent remainder…. The tyranny of the majority is a very real danger. It is a mistake to suppose that the majority is necessarily right…. there are a great many questions in which there is no need of a uniform decision…. Wherever divergent action by different groups is possible without anarchy, it ought to be permitted…. it is of the utmost importance that the majority should refrain from imposing its will as regards matters in which uniformity is not absolutely necessary.”

Now I wish to extract the principles contained in these three statements. In Russell’s case, the principle is unambiguous – wherever divergent action by different groups is possible without anarchy, it ought to be permitted. In Obama’s case, the principle is seemingly clear but possibly problematic as I shall argue later – individuals can do what they wish (within the law) as long as they do it out of free choice. In Sarkozy’s case, there is no principle; there is a statement of prejudice (the burqa is a sign of subservience, of debasement) and a statement of preference (in our country we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen).

I do not have a problem with Sarkozy’s personal prejudices. Nor do I have a problem with the passage of a law in France dictating what kind of outerwear is acceptable in the country – that is a prerogative of the French parliament. But note that such a law violates Russell’s reasonable principle provided we assume that the wearing of the burqa is not going to be the cause of anarchy in French society.

My concern about actions based not on defensible principles but upon prejudices and preferences is that they can be quite arbitrary and dangerous. What if Sarkozy next gets it into his head that the bindiya too is a sign of subservience? Or worse, what if some new Fuhrer coming to power decides that the yarmulke is an absurd pre-historic head covering stuck to the hair of men with pins and that it cannot be accepted in modern European society?

How does Sarkozy know that the burqa is a sign of subservience? It may be in some cases and not in others. Even when it is, how will disallowing it prevent other less visible forms of subservience continuing inside the home? And how does he know the yarmulke is not a sign of coercion in some cases?

It is here that I sense a weakness in the principle of free choice as enunciated by Obama. It is not generally the case that individuals attain the age of majority and are presented for the first time with the choice of wearing or not wearing a certain piece of outerwear. In most cases, they are socialized into wearing that piece of clothing from very early childhood growing up with the feeling that being without it as almost akin to being naked (in the case of the burqa) or in a state of deep sin (in the case of the yarmulke). This is quite different, for example, from the case of consensual homosexual relationships, which can be seen as an act of free choice – no one is socialized into such behavior from early childhood as a requirement of social or religious duty. So Obama has the wrong analogy in mind on which he has based his principle. What Obama calls free choice, Sarkozy will term subservience.

At the same time, there are indeed European women who are not socialized into traditional behavior but who now prefer to wear a burqini. This is indeed an expression of free choice in Obama’s terms and not a sign of subservience in Sarkozy’s terms. French authorities have to contort themselves to find a public health rationale to keep the burqini out of swimming pools when Western women were wearing similar costumes not more than half a century ago as will be obvious from this pictorial history of the bikini.

Based on the above both Sarkozy and Obama need to reconsider their positions. I personally wouldn’t want to be inside a burqa and I find the yarmulke quaintly odd but as long as there are people who wish to indulge their desires to wear them without causing anarchy in society, I would have to learn to keep my prejudices and my preferences to myself and not goad an otherwise indifferent majority into imposing its will on a minority. At the same time I quite like the bindiya (as long as it is not green) but have to refrain myself from ordering its universal usage. I also consider the move from the burqa to the burqini a giant leap for humanity and would hate to step in the way of this promising evolution.

Not for nothing was Bertrand Russell a philosopher of the highest rank.

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Assessing Kashmir Policies

As a follow up to our brief debate on the Kashmir issue, I wish to propose an exercise that evaluates the Kashmir policies of the governments of India and Pakistan and also puts our own objectivity to the test. Such an exercise could yield an awareness that might enable us to move the discussion forward.

What I propose is the following:

For the first part of the exercise stop thinking of yourself as a citizen of your country. Consider yourself an external examiner (ideally from Mars) who has been invited to evaluate the Kashmir policies of the governments of India and Pakistan, respectively.

Based on your understanding of the objective of the Kashmir policies, your task is to rate the respective policies as a success or a failure. In reaching this conclusion, you have to consider the extent to which the objective has been achieved, the cost and consequences of doing so, and the moral appropriateness of the actions employed in pursuit of the policies.

In the second part of the exercise, revert back to your role as a citizen of your country. In this part you should state the policies that you would have pursued if you had been in a position to do so.

Your response to this exercise should be posted in the comments space in the following format:

Age:
City of Residence:
Citizenship: 

India

Your understanding of the objective of the Indian policy (one sentence):
Rating of policy (Success or Failure):
Moral appropriateness of actions (Appropriate or Inappropriate):
Your recommended Indian policy (not more than two sentences): 

Pakistan

Your understanding of the objective of the Pakistani policy (one sentence):
Rating of policy (Success or Failure):
Moral appropriateness of actions (Appropriate or Inappropriate):
Your recommended Pakistani policy (not more than two sentences): 

Needless to say the opinions expressed would have no bearing on the immediate actions of the governments of India and Pakistan. The objective is only to get a sense of the perceptions of the readers of this blog. Every respondent is his/her own monitor – the Honor Code applies.

Please share this with as many people as you can so that we have a large enough response as a basis for continued discussion. This exercise is not limited to Indians and Pakistanis; all those interested in policy analysis and evaluation are welcome to participate.

A reader has drawn our attention to a poll conducted on this issue in 2008 by the University of Maryland. Its major shortcoming is that it is limited to urban respondents in India and Pakistan. It also follows a traditional India/Pakistan-centric framework. Still it can yield ideas about South Asians can design a more useful poll.

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Beyond Anti-Americanism

We have gone back and forth on the issue of American intervention in developing countries and I wish to return to the topic to broaden the terms of the discussion.

Reader Tahir had raised the issue in defense of Imran Khan’s position that was the subject of three earlier posts (here, here, and here). Let us see if a wider perspective improves our understanding and helps us think of better responses, both intellectual and practical.

The evidence of American interventions is not in dispute. In his Cairo address, President Obama conceded American involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran that toppled a democratic government. And this is only one of many, many instances well known to all except, perhaps, a majority of American voters. Imran Khan is part of the multitude that sees through the American rhetoric of high morality.

The question is how do we understand the nature of this phenomenon? Is Imran Khan right to turn it into an issue of the moral superiority of the East over the West or to transform it into a clash of Islam versus Christianity? Do these interpretations help or do they detract from our understanding? Do they enable positive responses or do they sidetrack us into blind alleys?

It should be obvious to the objective analyst that abuse of power is not a uniquely American or Western practice. Many countries of the East, including Pakistan, have been guilty of similar abuses. The difference is not one of intent but of scale. Based on evidence, it is difficult to believe that Pakistan’s actions would have been any different if it had the same kind of resources and power as the US.

It should also be obvious from a study of history that American interventions are not motivated by considerations of religion. The 1953 coup in Muslim Iran was matched by the 1973 coup in Christian Chile and the war in Buddhist Vietnam. Going through the list of other covert actions in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, it is hard to decipher a pattern related to religion. It seems more logical to attribute these actions to a belief that there are no moral boundaries when it comes to the promotion or protection of American interests as defined by its ruling elite. In most cases the definition of these interests is driven by the need to control vital natural resources distributed throughout the world.

Given the evidence cited above, it would not help much to attribute the problem to an evil Christian American empire. Even if by some miracle the evil empire is subdued, chances are another evil empire would rise to takes its place just as British colonialism was replaced by American neo-colonialism. (Let’s keep an eye on China as it begins to compete for scarce global resources.)

A more useful approach might be to consider how the power of states to promote their narrow interests at the cost of the welfare of others might be restrained. Note that the American government can no longer do within its own borders the kinds of things it does outside those borders. American public sentiment today would not tolerate an attempt at regime-change in Alaska or a coup in California or the appropriation of natural resources in Texas. At one time it could – as when it appropriated the lands of Native Americans or subjugated Blacks in the South – but public sentiment does not deem such actions allowable any more.

By contrast, South Asian governments face few restrictions on the abuse of state power within their own territories – the treatment of Balochistan is a particularly egregious example. When a population does not protest against the abuse of power within its own country, its protestations against the same practice by another country lose all moral strength and are reduced to the machinations of power politics.

This points to a two-step process. First, civil society in developing countries has to take a principled stand and energize public sentiment against the abuse of state power within their own borders. Second, the campaign then needs to be taken to the global level. This is not a hopelessly idealistic dream as the international reaction to the recent coup in Honduras demonstrates. At the very least, it has forestalled the kind of external intervention by the US that was very common in the recent past. It is possible to build coalitions towards such responses that take effective stands against abuses of power.

The world is still at a stage where the politics of countries is national while their economic interests are global. The majority of American voters, for example, do not hold their representatives to the same standard of behavior outside US borders as they do inside them. Global public sentiment needs to come together to empower global institutions to curb the abuse of power by countries outside their borders.

This brings us back to the devious ways in which ideology and religion get intertwined into these naked abuses of state power. How does the American government get away with such interventions without bringing on itself the censure of its citizens? Essentially by lying to them and by scaring them into believing that their way of life is threatened by evil forces. In earlier times it was the Red scare; now the Green scare has come in very handy.

In this, the American government takes advantage of the fact crucial information is disseminated by non-transparent intelligence sources that are not accessible to the public. Thus blatant misinformation about the number of nuclear warheads possessed by the USSR of old or weapons of mass destruction possessed by Iraq can be disseminated. Complete untruths about the links of the Iraqi government with Al-Qaeda can be spread by controlled feeds to media outlets.

Sustained hysteria about the Red menace or Muslim fundamentalists prepares the voters to accept these lies and support abuses of power that are sold as actions necessary to protect them. But note again that this a given in the politics of our times – Pakistani governments have created exactly the same kind of hysteria about Islam being in danger and has repeatedly lied to its population to rationalize covert interventions inside and outside its borders.

The bottom line is that there is no difference between East and West or Muslim and Christian when it comes to the abuse of state power. By falling into the trap of interpreting it along these lines, we reinforce the paranoia of Western citizens that Islam is truly a threat to their way of life. This is precisely the impression that the powerful governments of today wish to perpetuate.

What the world is really enmeshed in is a struggle between the global haves and the global have-nots to maintain a very lopsided distribution of the world’s resources as long as possible. Making it appear as a clash of the West against Islam successfully divides the have-nots and prevents a united global sentiment from coalescing against the abuses of power.

However, we cannot fight the global fight until we have fought the local one. The struggle between the global haves and the have-nots is replicated locally within the boundaries of virtually all developing countries – Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or non-religious. Our struggle must begin at home.

When Pakistanis failed to stand up for East Pakistan they abdicated this struggle. If Pakistanis do not stand up for Balochistan, it means they have still not understood what abuse of state power is about. They continue to be fooled by the rhetoric about the enemies of the nation and of Islam just as Americans continue to be fooled by the rhetoric of the evil axis threatening their lives. It might be comforting to vent passion against the evil ‘Other’ but a little bit of reflection would reveal that one is being strung along on a string whose end is in the hands of those with very narrow interests at heart.

Imran Khan, we need you on our side.

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More and Less of Imran Khan

This post continues the series initiated by Imran Khan’s observations on the differences between West and East (Why the West Craves Materialism and Why the East Sticks to Religion) but it is more about the issues and less about Imran Khan.

In particular it addresses the points raised by Tahir in his four comments on the earlier post. These points cover so many areas that it is best to deal with them in a separate post.

To start with, it is useful to separate the various strands in the comments and respond to them one at a time. For example, it would help to separate the political and the religious dimensions. There is little doubt that the US has exploited many countries including Pakistan. But this has very little to do with religion.

The fact is that throughout history those with power have used it to exploit those without power. Many examples can be cited not only those involving Western countries. The case of Japan (in China, Manchuria, and Korea) and of Pakistani governments (in East Pakistan and Balochistan) can be cited. Buddhists and Muslims, respectively, carried out these abuses of power.

Human beings, whatever their religion, have not found a way to impose any kind of morality on the use of power – naked self-interest always seems to triumph. Therefore the issue of politics and religion should not be mixed together. Rather, the challenge is to understand why this continues to be the case and to propose mechanisms to restrain future abuses of power.

Second, the issue of materialism also needs to be separated from religion. Tahir has mentioned that even in Pakistan urban areas are more “materialistic” than rural areas. Therefore it is a useful hypothesis to explore whether urbanization contributes to an increase in materialism.  If so, one can explain greater materialism in the US simply because it is much more urbanized. But, surely, no one will recommend keeping Pakistani society forever rural in order to preserve its asserted lack of materialism.

However, before exploring such a hypothesis, one would have to define what one means by materialism. Urban areas are much more dominated by a market economy compared to rural areas and household incomes are also higher. In a market economy no one makes everything they consume; rather, they buy the things they need from the market. This need to buy things due to the different nature of the market cannot be labeled materialism and considered bad.

Without a definition with which to measure materialism, comparative statements like “Eastern society was never materialistic” do not carry much conviction and can only be treated as assertions in need of proof. Also, a statement that “to the people of the East, life is not just about earning money” needs substantiation. The ranking of Pakistan on the Transparency International Corruption Index is among the highest in the world. This would need to be explained if making money is not important. Similarly, the incidence of charitable giving and volunteerism in the West is very high. Why would a totally materialistic society subscribe to such practices? This too would need to be explained in a more complete framework.

Third, there is a need to separate ethics and religion. Tahir mentions that sectarianism and theft were common in the West till the 19^th century. This means that if sectarianism and theft have significantly decreased in the West despite (as claimed) an equally significant decline in religious belief, the two are perhaps unrelated. And the fact that the East sticks to religion and yet has a high incidence of sectarianism and theft points to the same conclusion. Becoming more religious does not look like solving these problems. In fact, Pakistan is much more religiously oriented today than it was in the 1960s and yet corruption has greatly increased.

Fourth, the point about indigenous institutions is also independent of religion. It does make sense to build modern institutions on the foundation of familiar inherited traditions after their deficiencies have been remedied. But these, like the jirga, are cultural traditions that have little to do with religion.

Fifth, it is a weak argument to attribute our failings to the fact that religion is not being followed in the true sense. There is a contradiction here. If the West has overcome these problems without religion why does the East need even more religion than it now has? In fact, this argument opens up a very difficult question: Why can’t people in the East follow their own religion? Who is stopping them from behaving ethically in their personal lives? What’s the point of having a great religion if nobody follows it unless intimidated through the brutal use of force?

By bringing in religion into every issue and getting sidetracked into attempts to prove that “our” religion is better than “their” religion, the solution of problems that are important to ordinary people are indefinitely delayed. One can only deplore the fact that even in the 21^st century half the population of Pakistan is illiterate and significant percentages denied basic human rights and services like clean water. True religion may not deliver these because some group will always claim that the religion we have is not the true one. Politics usually hides behind the veil of religion and inevitably power would be used to resolve such disputes just as the Deobandis and Barelvis are doing today.

A more useful benchmark to measure the success of a society is to see what it has been able to provide for the bottom twenty percent of its population. On that criterion some countries in the East have failed miserably. And when one uses an objective indicator like that, it ceases to matter who might be lying or telling the truth. The results speak for themselves.

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