Choices
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
The great saint of Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, maintained that whom one chooses to associate with has a profound bearing on the direction and destiny of life.
Choice is destiny. And choice has consequences.
Ayub’s choice to mentor Bhutto set the stage for his own downfall in 1969. Yahya Khan’s choice to hold general elections in December 1970, allowing Mujib to contest the elections under the separatist 6-points platform, precipitated the secession of East Pakistan and the emergence thereby of Bangladesh.
Bhutto’s choice of Zia as Army Chief proved, in effect, to be tying the noose around his neck. Nawaz Sharif’s choice of Musharraf to be Army Chief triggered his ignominious ouster and later exile to Saudi Arabia.
Musharraf’s choice of Kayani to succeed him as Army Chief is one he publicly came to rue.
900 years ago, when King Henry II of England chose his friend Becket to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, it set in motion a chain of events which led to the assassination of Becket, right within the Canterbury Cathedral.
Many of these choices were driven not by merit but by the illusion that hand-picked guys would prove to be pliable tools, under the misperception that they would be indebted and beholden to their benefactors. Beneficiaries turn on their benefactors.
14 centuries ago, Hazrat Ali had warned to beware of the malice of those who benefit from one’s largesse.
The yen for the placement of favorites is often driven by self-interest as if the chosen ones would protect and respect the selectors. But often, actors are prone to cut loose from the apron strings of directors. It also goes to show how underestimated has been, historically, the skill set of sound decision-making.
Too often, the desire to be over-smart trumps common sense. Over-smartness is dumb. Many a decision is taken in the dark, surreptitiously, without it being weighed, vetted, and subject to critical scrutiny and reconsideration. There is a lack of impulse control and inadequate realization of its side-effects and repercussions.
President Ayub later rued dispatching a Gibraltar force to Indian-held Kashmir, in that he felt he should have formed a counter-syndicate to evaluate that decision, which ignited the September 1965 war. By electing Modi as Prime Minister, India has renounced the nonviolent humanism of Mahatma Gandhi, opting instead for the savage bigotry epitomized by Hindutva.
In America, Obama’s choice of a tainted Hillary instead of the relatively unblemished Joe Biden to carry forward his agenda as a Democratic nominee in the 2016 Presidential elections, in effect, paved the path of Trump to the White House, thereby undermining Obama’s legacy.
Then, too, in 2016, PM David Cameron played Russian roulette with Britain’s future well-being by holding a self-damaging referendum on Brexit. Its aftermath imperils the integrity of the United Kingdom with fissiparous trends already flaring up in Scotland, while also affecting the border of British Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, apart from travel, trade, and migrant implications.
There is a tendency to over-attribute events to conspiracies thereby avoiding the hard task of figuring out that, at the core, are bad choices.
