The testament of Sartaj Aziz

To quote Walt Whitman, Mr Sartaj Aziz contains multitudes. It is difficult to find any other Pakistani who has served as a bureaucrat; official of an international organization; scholar and researcher; senator; principal officeholder of a political party; originator of an historic amendment to the constitution; minister for finance, foreign affairs, and planning; educator and university chancellor; and, of course, author.

The author has just published the second edition of his memoir ‘Between Hopes and Realities’, published originally in 2009. This is the first serious history of Pakistan in the twenty-first century, from Musharraf to Zardari to Nawaz Sharif to Imran Khan.

Although a memoir and autobiography, ‘Between Dreams and Realities’ is also the first single-volume history of Pakistan authored by a Pakistani that can stand justifiably on the same shelf as Anatol Lieven’s ‘Pakistan: A Hard Country’ and Ian Talbot’s ‘Pakistan: A Modern History’.

Sartaj Aziz’s judgments are judicious; his recollection is immaculate. This holds true even when he recounts the most recent government of his, and my, party the PML-N and offers a trenchant yet balanced analysis of the personality of Nawaz Sharif.

Those who venture to read in this book about the PML-N’s 2013-18 government have been conditioned by the media and by the current ruling party to expect only corruption. Instead, they will find in Chapter 15 a government that actually governed. And governed with success.

The PML-N’s 2013-18 government prevailed over some of the biggest governance challenges faced by any government in Pakistan’s history: energy crisis, terrorism, runaway inflation, foreign-policy asphyxiated by conflict in Afghanistan, murder and chaos in Karachi, and an economy crushed by all of the above. 'Between Hopes and Realities' is an eloquent testament that by the end of the constitutional term in 2018, Nawaz Sharif and then Shahid Abbasi as PML-N prime ministers had resolved all these issues.

The author’s indefatigable personal contribution in this period led to the first face-to-face talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, Pakistan’s full membership into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Pakistan’s first substantive opening to Russia, deepening of relationship with China, a constitutional amendment that merged Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and adoption of Pakistan’s first comprehensive Water Policy.

The second edition of ‘Between Dreams and Realities’, including its new epilogue, is worth a doctorate in Pakistani history. In understated, clear prose, the author progresses through events most of which he witnessed and participated in himself. Yet he is consistently modest, just as Confucius advised: “He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.”

My only cavil with the book is that at many places, Sartaj Aziz is reticent to the point of self-abnegation; discreet to the point of blandness. Yet he also remedies with bravura passages, one of which on p498 highlights a cornerstone dilemma of Pakistan’s polity – the overwhelming non-civilian ingress in all facets of national life and the societal acquiescence to it, which resulted from a long-term process of stigmatizing the legitimate and legitimizing the politically illegitimate. It wasn’t just politicians but political institutions that were undermined by inducing the conviction that without the ingress nothing stood between people and cataclysm.

What I appreciate the most about Sartaj Aziz are two strands running through his life and this book. The first is his participation in the Pakistan Movement, followed by a lifelong devotion to Jinnah and to the ideals that lead to Pakistan. This non-jingoistic, clear-eyed patriotism is almost extinct in our society. It is a marvel that the passion for Pakistan still burns brightly in him even at age 91.

The second is his profound commitment to democracy. Most educated Pakistanis are closet-authoritarians. Sartaj Aziz by contrast did not discover democracy after retirement. He believed and believes in it; entered the fray; fought his corner of policymaking as a civilian; and remains committed to the constitution.

The poet Milton wrote: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”

Unlike so many well-qualified Pakistanis and unlike so many of his Pakistani colleagues in domestic and international civil service, Sartaj Aziz chose not to slink away from Pakistan, of which he had ample opportunity. He chose not to cloister his virtue, but instead opted for the heat and dust.

The author served Pakistan in whatever position he was in, and his book is also a facet of his service to our country. I am delighted to praise the virtue of both Mr Sartaj Aziz and of his estimable book; and look forward to the third edition to solve the dilemma of “acquiescence”.

The writer is a member of the National Assembly and served in the federal cabinet 2013-18.

Email: pmlnna81@gmail.com

Twitter: @kdastgirkhan