South Asia Investor Review

Did the U.S. make it clear to Pakistan in 2022 that Imran Khan was not acceptable as the prime minister of the South Asian country? Did the Pakistani military then use the Opposition parties led by Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari to remove Imran Khan from power through a successful No-Confidence vote in the parliament? The answer to both of these questions appears to be a resounding "yes" based on the leaked contents of a secret diplomatic cable, the actions of the Opposition politicians and the attempts to dismantle the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the jailing of Imran Khan on trumped-up charges. These events have created significant political instability in the country and prompted former US National Security Advisor John Bolton  to urge the Biden administration to take a clear position before the “terrorists, China and Russia take advantage” of the situation. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan (L) and General Asim Munir Diplomatic Cable: A leaked diplomatic cable fro...

As India and Pakistan turn 75, there are many secular intellectuals on both sides of the border who question the wisdom of "the Partition" in 1947. They dismiss what is happening in India today under Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership as a temporary aberration, not the norm. They long for a return to "Indian liberalism" which according to anthropologist  Sanjay Srivastava  "did not exist".  India Pakistan Border Ceremony at Wagah-Attari Crossing American historian  Audrey Truschke  who studies India traces the early origins of Hindu Nationalism to the British colonial project to "divide and rule" the South Asian subcontinent. She says colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India. These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington on September 23rd for a bilateral meeting with President Joseph R. Biden followed by a 4-nation summit involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States.  An unhappy meme of his visit went viral on social media as Mr. Modi wrapped up his visit to the United States.  Modi Washington Visit Meme It highlights four key complaints about how the Indian prime minister was treated by the White House: 1. President Biden did not receive Prime Minister Modi at the White House porch. This is in sharp contrast to the reception President Donald J. Trump gave Pakistani  Prime Minister Imran Khan  during the latter's visit in 2019. President Trump greeted Prime Minister Khan in the driveway as the latter emerged from his car.  2. US media did not cover Modi's visit. ( Pakistan 's Imran Khan was on the Newsweek cover while Modi was in Washington). The media coverage Modi did receive in the US media was about lectures f...

Kishore Mahbubani, a prolific writer, speaker and former Singaporean diplomat, believes that the western domination of the world over the last 200 years is "aberrant" when seen in the context of the last several thousand years of human history.  In his book "Has China Won", he writes that "we are also moving away from a black-and-white world". "Societies in different parts of the world, including in China and  Islamic societies , are going to work toward a different balance between liberty and order, between freedom and control, between discord and harmony".  Kishore Mahbubabi In a recent interview,  Mahbubani  made the following points about US-China competition:  1. The United States with about 240-year history likes to pass judgement on  China  which has over 2,400 year history. What makes the US think China would listen to the American advice?  2. The West is in the habit of judging everyone, including the Chinese. The Chinese have just h...

Few  films about India  offer the kind of incisive social commentary that the recently released "The White Tiger" does. Based on a novel of the same name by Aravind Adiga, it tells  the story of a poor but ambitious young man from a village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The film touches on religion, caste, class and democracy in India. It is directed by Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani and now available on Netflix.  The White Tiger: Adarsh Gourav, Priyanka Chopra and Rajkummar Rao The movie opens with a scene showing Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) looking back at his life. It follows up with a series of long flashbacks to tell his story. Along the way, Balram sarcastically compares  India's democracy  with China's sanitation system. “If I were in charge of India, I’d get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy.” Numerous scenes in the film illustrate  poor sanitation  in India by showing Balram and others squatting and  defec...

About a week before the world witnessed the storming of the US Capitol by an angry mob on January 6, 2020, the US Congress allocated $15 million for "democracy programs" in Pakistan as part of its latest Coronavirus Relief Bill. Should charity start at home? Should America prioritize democracy at home? With  64% of Republicans  supporting Trump's false claim of "stolen election", has pro-Trump extremism gone mainstream in GOP? How to deal with the fervent believers in QAnon conspiracy theories while promoting a fact-based democratic discourse? How can deep divisions in American society be healed? These questions are beginning to be raised after recent shocking events in Washington D.C. Meanwhile, the US government-funded think tanks such National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are very active in many developing countries, including Pakistan.   Cato institute  says that what NED does "would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation".  NED...

Speaking with Fareed Zakaria on US cable news network CNN, former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers told Zakaria's audience that "if the US had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan,  we would have saved around $10 trillion ".  Ex US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers Praised Pakistan on CNN After similar praise of Pakistan's handling of coronavirus by Bill Gates on CNN GPS show, this was yet another rebuke of Fareed Zakaria who never misses any opportunity to disparage Pakistan. It reminds us all  how wrong headed is his earlier statement that Pakistan "has done almost nothing as far as I can tell, you know, infections are not going crazy, death rates are not going crazy, there may be some underreporting" Below I am reproducing a post I wrote on this subject on August 12, 2020:  Interviewing Bill Gates on global fight against COVID19,  CNN GPS  host Fareed Zakaria said on Sunday August 9 that Pakistan "has done almost nothing as far as I ...

In his recently published book entitled "The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous", Harvard Professor Joseph Henrich argues that western democracy and prosperity in America and Europe can be traced back to the Catholic Church's ban on cousin marriages and polygamy. These bans promoted individualism and created what is now known as a "nuclear family". Cousin marriages and strong kinship remain prevalent in present-day Pakistan, according to the author. Cousin marriage not only helps keep the wealth within the family but it is also used as a device to maintain kinship (biradri) networks that have negative political and economic consequences for the nation. Biradris promote nepotism and work against meritocracy. While the extent of kinship (biradri) networks in Pakistan is much higher than in America and Europe, it is not as high as in Africa and the Middle East. Biradris (kinships) play a powerful ...

Multiple  polls  conducted over many years in  Pakistan  have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis have high confidence in the Pakistani military. This is in sharp contrast to significantly lower levels of confidence they have shown in the country's politicians and bureaucrats. These results appear to reflect the Pakistanis' fear of chaos...the chaos which has hurt them more than any other threat since the country's inception in 1947.  Indian Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has described this situation in the following words: "Despite numerous dire forecasts of imminently proving to be a "failed state" Pakistan has survived, bouncing back every now and then as a recognizable democracy with a popularly elected civilian government, the military in the wings but politics very much centre-stage .....the Government of Pakistan remaining in charge, and the military stepping in to rescue the nation from chaos every time Pakistan appeare...

CNN GPS host Fareed Zakaria is known to be among the loudest cheerleaders for India and a  sharp critic of Pakistan . While he still refuses to say anything that could even remotely be considered positive about Pakistan, it seems that he is souring on his native India. Fareed Zakaria Speaking with Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta on  The Print YouTube  channel, Fareed Zakaria called the Indian state an “inefficient state”.“Indian government functions very poorly, even in comparison to other developing countries. Coronavirus has highlighted that reality, " he added. He did not clearly speak about the  lynchings of Indian Muslims  by people affiliated with the ruling BJP and the brutality of Indian military  against Kashmiri Muslims , but he did ask: “What I wonder about (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi is, is he really bringing all of India along with him? He noted sadly:”India seems like roadkill for China". Has New Delhi's abject failure in containin...