Let’s start with a hypothetical anecdote: You’re on a tennis field playing against your arch-rival. On the side benches sits a man. He’s both the head of the selecting committee and is also the medical specialist. Yes, in this hypothetical world, power is concentrated to a selected few. The powerful man is one of those.
You play now. It’s an intense match. During it, you realise something. Somehow, the powerful man is always looking elsewhere when you score a point. On the contrary, he keeps acknowledging and validating your competitor’s wins. You grunt louder when you hit the ball, hoping he looks towards you. But, to no avail.
While trying to get his attention, you make a mistake and slip. The powerful man instantly looks at you and rushes to treat your scratches. He’s kind. A little too much. He proposes a cast for a scratched forearm. You insist that you can still play. He reluctantly agrees.
Later in the match, your competitor falls too. But the powerful man does not run to him. He’s a big boy, you hear the powerful man say, even though you know the two of you are the same age. As the match continues, the powerful man continues to ignore your wins. As the match goes, the powerful man continues to compulsively tend to your blisters.
When the match finally ends, a report is published. Your wins are not recorded because the powerful man never saw them. Your competitor though gets his wins recorded. More so, the powerful man comments that your competitor is strong, determined, and knows how to pick himself up when he’s down. For you he writes that you’re very weak, that you need constant help, and require more training and courses to not only build your tennis game but also your character.
Naturally, your arch-rival gets selected. The hypothetical anecdote ends here.
Dr Moeed Yusuf was a breath of fresh air in Pakistani politics. He never indulged in the cheap dramatics we’ve come to normalise as inherent to Pakistani politics. In fact, several times in his tenure, he explicitly made it clear that he was not a politician. This meant, you couldn’t tease out some raunchy soundbite from him. He was there to follow through with a narrow, focused commitment. And he refused to deviate from that.
But that’s not the highlight of his career. Dr Yusuf tried to usher in the age of episteme in Pakistan’s foreign policies. The tried and tested under-the-table strategies, or outlandish statements were to be a thing of the past. Now, under Dr Yusuf, Pakistan would fight its case based on observable and testable facts.
Dr Yusuf insisted on this need in several of his interviews. He exclaimed that India had the world on its side because it was more organised with its arguments. He insisted that the world at large believed India only because it produced more data and hence could more efficiently mould the meta-narrative in its favour. The solution, ergo, was simple. Episteme wars!
And some battles were indeed fought. Let’s take one. Dr Yusuf took centre stage, at least in Pakistani media, when EU DisinfoLab made its revelations. Turned out, India had been running a propaganda campaign spanning some 15 years to convince transnational organisations and EU states to vote in favour of policies that supported its stance. Dr Yusuf claimed that these revelations, along with a dossier submitted by his office, was an ‘eye opener’ and that the world ought to, at least now, acknowledge that things are not as they seem in this troubled geography. He was optimistic that this was the crack that was going to shatter India’s façade and reveal to the world that it was nothing more than a manipulative bully. In turn, this loss of reputation would, as was hoped, trigger a response from the world. World leaders, now apprised with the capital-T truth, would take the Kashmir issue seriously and stop investing so much of their faith (and money) into a country that’s blatantly conniving and duplicitous.
Anyone who followed any non-Pakistani news medium after the release of the report and Dr Yusuf’s impressive statement in the press conference, would recognise that nothing really changed. In fact, the ‘west’ that champions its crusades against misinformation, barely bat an eye on the revelations. A year and a half down the road, nothing has really changed. There are no policies and resolutions challenging Indian stances. There is no world-shaming. Kashmir continues to be a non-issue.
Some of the readers here would insist that I am being impatient. That, it would take time to undo the work of a 15-year-old campaign. That, much like Dr Yusuf’s stance, we need more information that’s better analysed and suited to ‘modern’ requirements and, eventually, the fragile tower that India has constructed will come tumbling down.
I hope that these people are right. But I would loudly announce that I am deeply pessimistic about this. As someone who has spent some time in both academics and the world of think-tanks; within and beyond Pakistan, I have come to see that the game is indeed rigged. That, sure the claim all-results-are-results is true, but there are only certain results that end up having the impact we hope for them to have. It is rare that someone explicitly bars a finding. But, it is with funding invitations or structural nuances that we, the researchers, are given the message that some truths are truer than the truth itself.
Going back to the anecdote and Dr Yusuf’s well-meaning project. The powerful players in the global stage need to believe in a certain narrative. This narrative is not a superficial conspiracy theory. Instead, it’s part of a historical project that requires an ‘other’ to exist. In the case of the subcontinent, Pakistan is that other. It is the other who’s positives need to be ignored not because they somehow impact the powerful players. No. They are to be ignored because they are irrelevant to the narrative the powerful players internalise. At the same time, its failures need to be recognised and exaggerated simply because they confirm the narratives the powerful must believe in. They must be saviours and Pakistan must be saved. For that to happen, it needs to be the bad egg in the subcontinent. Of course, the bad-ness is relative (as is everything else). And, in this case, the relatively good egg needs to be India.
It’s a rigged game, this one. And only the data that confirms the predicted results is good data. Everything else is noise. Noise fades away sooner than we think.
You play now. It’s an intense match. During it, you realise something. Somehow, the powerful man is always looking elsewhere when you score a point. On the contrary, he keeps acknowledging and validating your competitor’s wins. You grunt louder when you hit the ball, hoping he looks towards you. But, to no avail.
While trying to get his attention, you make a mistake and slip. The powerful man instantly looks at you and rushes to treat your scratches. He’s kind. A little too much. He proposes a cast for a scratched forearm. You insist that you can still play. He reluctantly agrees.
Later in the match, your competitor falls too. But the powerful man does not run to him. He’s a big boy, you hear the powerful man say, even though you know the two of you are the same age. As the match continues, the powerful man continues to ignore your wins. As the match goes, the powerful man continues to compulsively tend to your blisters.
When the match finally ends, a report is published. Your wins are not recorded because the powerful man never saw them. Your competitor though gets his wins recorded. More so, the powerful man comments that your competitor is strong, determined, and knows how to pick himself up when he’s down. For you he writes that you’re very weak, that you need constant help, and require more training and courses to not only build your tennis game but also your character.
Naturally, your arch-rival gets selected. The hypothetical anecdote ends here.
Dr Moeed Yusuf was a breath of fresh air in Pakistani politics. He never indulged in the cheap dramatics we’ve come to normalise as inherent to Pakistani politics. In fact, several times in his tenure, he explicitly made it clear that he was not a politician. This meant, you couldn’t tease out some raunchy soundbite from him. He was there to follow through with a narrow, focused commitment. And he refused to deviate from that.
But that’s not the highlight of his career. Dr Yusuf tried to usher in the age of episteme in Pakistan’s foreign policies. The tried and tested under-the-table strategies, or outlandish statements were to be a thing of the past. Now, under Dr Yusuf, Pakistan would fight its case based on observable and testable facts.
Dr Yusuf insisted on this need in several of his interviews. He exclaimed that India had the world on its side because it was more organised with its arguments. He insisted that the world at large believed India only because it produced more data and hence could more efficiently mould the meta-narrative in its favour. The solution, ergo, was simple. Episteme wars!
And some battles were indeed fought. Let’s take one. Dr Yusuf took centre stage, at least in Pakistani media, when EU DisinfoLab made its revelations. Turned out, India had been running a propaganda campaign spanning some 15 years to convince transnational organisations and EU states to vote in favour of policies that supported its stance. Dr Yusuf claimed that these revelations, along with a dossier submitted by his office, was an ‘eye opener’ and that the world ought to, at least now, acknowledge that things are not as they seem in this troubled geography. He was optimistic that this was the crack that was going to shatter India’s façade and reveal to the world that it was nothing more than a manipulative bully. In turn, this loss of reputation would, as was hoped, trigger a response from the world. World leaders, now apprised with the capital-T truth, would take the Kashmir issue seriously and stop investing so much of their faith (and money) into a country that’s blatantly conniving and duplicitous.
Anyone who followed any non-Pakistani news medium after the release of the report and Dr Yusuf’s impressive statement in the press conference, would recognise that nothing really changed. In fact, the ‘west’ that champions its crusades against misinformation, barely bat an eye on the revelations. A year and a half down the road, nothing has really changed. There are no policies and resolutions challenging Indian stances. There is no world-shaming. Kashmir continues to be a non-issue.
Some of the readers here would insist that I am being impatient. That, it would take time to undo the work of a 15-year-old campaign. That, much like Dr Yusuf’s stance, we need more information that’s better analysed and suited to ‘modern’ requirements and, eventually, the fragile tower that India has constructed will come tumbling down.
I hope that these people are right. But I would loudly announce that I am deeply pessimistic about this. As someone who has spent some time in both academics and the world of think-tanks; within and beyond Pakistan, I have come to see that the game is indeed rigged. That, sure the claim all-results-are-results is true, but there are only certain results that end up having the impact we hope for them to have. It is rare that someone explicitly bars a finding. But, it is with funding invitations or structural nuances that we, the researchers, are given the message that some truths are truer than the truth itself.
Going back to the anecdote and Dr Yusuf’s well-meaning project. The powerful players in the global stage need to believe in a certain narrative. This narrative is not a superficial conspiracy theory. Instead, it’s part of a historical project that requires an ‘other’ to exist. In the case of the subcontinent, Pakistan is that other. It is the other who’s positives need to be ignored not because they somehow impact the powerful players. No. They are to be ignored because they are irrelevant to the narrative the powerful players internalise. At the same time, its failures need to be recognised and exaggerated simply because they confirm the narratives the powerful must believe in. They must be saviours and Pakistan must be saved. For that to happen, it needs to be the bad egg in the subcontinent. Of course, the bad-ness is relative (as is everything else). And, in this case, the relatively good egg needs to be India.
It’s a rigged game, this one. And only the data that confirms the predicted results is good data. Everything else is noise. Noise fades away sooner than we think.
