Harish Nambiar January 12, 2002

Tags: India , Pakistan , Vajpayee

On January 12, President Musharraf exhibited the moral courage of the man with character who has been called by destiny to the antechamber of history.

href="/tag/Pakistan">Pakistan President General Musharraf alive for ten years, at least.

That of course is only my prayer, because President Musharraf did today something he’s not done till now. He managed to bring a rare dignity to a very difficult situation. And he did it with panache. With grace. With style. With extraordinary flair.

Musharraf is a man whom I expect to be all those things. He’s the man whose political career I have followed closely on audio-video mode. Thank goodness he’s only a couple of years old in that career.

Musharraf, in my mind, is the dashing officer in fatigues checking out the pistol at an army camp with half a cigerrete lit and smoking in his mouth. The ultimate stud in uniform. Then he’s the stud-in-uniform changing his dresses for his bollywood imperative during the Agra summit. He impressed with his cool demeanor of an Ivy League MBA showboating before men and women of lesser pedigree. In the conference with Indian editors, he switched mode to sincere sophomore with honest-to-God excuses.

Then I remember him in another address to the Pakistani nation. The famous “My message to India is ‘Lay off.’ That was the post September 11.

Then there was a severely messed up President at the Saarc summit in Kathmandu. That is where I saw a president of a sovereign nation monkeying around, leaving his lectern to shake hands with India’s most famous bad poet. That single televised act of Musharraf evoked in me the pain that a fan goes through when he sees his favourite 70mm Marlovian actor taking a bit role, probably for his livelihood, but disastrously out of scale. And the pangs of desperation that suck dry even a natural act of its sincerity, by the abject conquest of the person by his situation, hit me hard.

Musharraf was pathetically shallow in that short march from the lectern to the dais at Kathmandu. The reason was that he had not finished his battle with his tormentors, and the actor was a soulless shell of his own self.

By January 12 Musharraf had finished with his battle. His natural sincerity was back with him. He had regained his conviction. His enemies were identified. His fear of publicly identifying them was already conquered. He had the sincerity of the soldier heading to the front with his objectives clear. And above all else he had no more responsibility for the national or at least the most advertised posturing of the Pakistani establishment. Musharraf is too good a man to be wasted on posturing. Unfortunately generations of Pakistanis indoctrinated on that precise schoolyard exercise clapped when he did go through the routines.

The circumstances of January 12 address were vastly different. He was the president of a severely cornered country. There was little space for him to move. The spine of his speech was already delivered to his office. He could not shoot the messenger because the messenger was dressed in a rudely tasteless star and stripes. There was a big passage in the draft delivered that was obviously scripted in Sanskritic Hindi that he winced at. He smelt the heeng, as it were.

So what does President General Pervez Musharrraf do?

He takes the bull by the horns. He decides that since he cannot deviate from the script, he might as well weave himself into it. The final challenge of the actor who lives his role. And on the night of his greatest challenge, Musharraf drops the rules of the drama school. He drops all the minor and major rules of his esteemed teachers. He realizes that his moment of truth has arrived. He forgets all his education. All his training. All his past. He plunges to attack his moment. And he finds a maturity he did not believe he had, a talent he knew to be far below what he needed for the situation, breaching its own limit, and a strength that he constantly paid homage to but had no clue of. The routine drill of the branded faithful.

The moral courage of the man with character who has been called by destiny to the antechamber of history.

President Musharraf has made the speech of his life. My own country’s prime minister will have to congratulate him. Vajpayee, the career politician and aspirant to statesmanship, has all reasons to leave his lectern and congratulate Musharraf. The beret has grown to be a statesman. In two years.

Let no thinking man with a stake in South Asia forget that President Musharraf is a man who has just tonight crossed over from barrack bravado to serious statesmanship. Before the subtext is analysed, diced and chopped on the unflinching guillotine of ideology, and before history runs its dreary and unpredictable course, let me remind you, dear reader, you read it here first.

Prime Minister Vajpayee has made similar gestures of statesmanship extremely credible and thoroughly commendable for a career politician who is still in touch with ideals, however tenuous and fogged.

However, President Musharraf, accept mine as the first Indian salute for your January 12 address.