How To Invade Pakistan (The Predictions Revisited)

Three years before he died, the noted political analyst at Harvard Alfred J. Skopuropski wrote in his monumental The Future Of War (Houston : Rice University Press, 1987) that the wars of the future will be 'fought over the head'. Unfortunately, that somewhat cryptic comment rather went above the heads of most of his impetuous critics who accused him of succumbing to the fashionable trend of anti-intellectualism that was then rampant throughout the corridors of Western academia. In 2005, long after Skopuropski's death, the Transparent Ironist (henceforth : TI) happened to read his book in a dusty library, and obtained therefrom a brainwave concerning a preemptive strike on Pakistan, a country that he had believed for a long time to be in dire need of a bit of civilizing. This is how the future course of events will unfold, the Ironist predicts with that unnervingly transparent gaze that is gifted to certain prophetic mortals like him at those rare critical junctures of global history.

23 May, 2005 : The TI meets the top officials of the Mumbai Chamber of Commerce (in Mumbai, where else?), and in particular Mr. Varad Shampoowalla, the Chairman of Hindustan Levers, the company which manufactures the famous shampoo Clinic Plus. He points out to Mr. Shampoowalla that his company faces two major problems so far as the Indian market is concerned. Firstly, the market is pretty much saturated with all kinds of brands produced by other shampoo companies such as Procter and Gamble. Secondly, more and more Indian women are cutting their hair short as a symbolic rejection of a patriarchal age when women were expected to have long, shiny, glossy, silky, and beautiful hair, and this in turn is an ominous sign that not too many Indian women will be buying shampoos ten years hence.

25 May, 2005 : Mr Shampoowalla convenes an Emergency Board Meeting (EBM) of Hindustan Levers which is attended by the company's CEO, the Executive Sales Manager, the Chief Manager for Production, ten shareholders, and the TI himself. At this EBM, various strategies are proposed to meet the projected shortfall in the company's share of the Indian market, and all of them are rejected one by one as being too impractical. Finally, the TI puts forward his earth-shattering plan : he points out that there is a potent market of 10.5 billion women in Pakistan (2001 census statistics) who can be induced to buy the shampoos of Hindustan Lever. There is, however, only one problem : these 10.5 billion women wear at all times the headscarf called the hijab, a relic from a primitive patriarchal era, and this is the major reason why these women do not quite bother to shampoo their hair, even when their husbands cannot stand the putrid stench of their unwashed hair.

28 May, 2005 : The board-members of the Mumbai Chamber of Commerce meet General Rudraveena Ajay Mukherjee of the Indian Army, and inform him that India has finally found a moral cause to invade Pakistan : to liberate Pakistani women (48% of the country's population) from the masculine tyranny of having to cover their heads. They also meet Mr Subhajit Sujay Varshney, Finance Minister, who is advised that the Indian economy stands to gain an estimated figure of 43.5 billion Indian rupees from the sale of shampoos to the Pakistani women who shall soon be liberated by the Indian Peacekeeping Army. Finally, they call upon Mr Vijay Swadesh Deshbandhu, Honorable Prime Minister, and suggest to him that with the next General Elections coming up in 2006 it would be in his best interests to rouse an indignant Indian nation against the ruthless Pakistani men to defend the honour of their brutalised womenfolk.

1 June, 2005 : Three feminists at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, publish a ground-breaking article in the international journal The Sceptical Feminist called 'Can The Subaltern See?' in which they argue that Pakistani women, hegemonically compelled to wear the oppressive hijab, are not allowed to see each other's hair in public, and that this flagrant denial is a direct assault on women's liberty worldwide. Their article is warmly received by the international academic community, and they receive enthusiastic responses from places as far away as Oxford, Harvard, Chicago, and Bonn.

5 June, 2005 : The executives of Procter and Gamble, the fierce rival of Hindustan Levers, suddenly wake up from their commercial slumber with the realisation that their opponents have stolen their thunder from under (or above?) their heads. They issue an urgent appeal to Mr Ashutosh Durgam Mahadevan, External Affairs Minister, that their shampoo products are head and shoulders (no pun intended) above all their competitors in the Indian market, and that they should be given the sole right to enter the Pakistani market after the future liberation. The CEO of Procter and Gamble, Mr Andrew McIntosh, makes an apocalyptic phone-call from San Diego to the American Ambassador in New Delhi, who informs the Indian Prime Minister that India shall not enjoy America's moral support for the planned liberation of Pakistan unless the interests of Procter and Gamble are safeguarded.

10 June, 2005 : In response to newspaper reports that there are some categories of Indian women who wear a head-dress that faintly resembles the Pakistani hijab, the Indian Parliament passes the draconian TAHA act (Terrorism and Anti-Hijab Act), thereby forbidding all Indian women to cover their hair in any manner, either in public or in private.

11 June, 2005 : An intrepid journalist from South India called Ms Chandravati Ray publicly burns a copy of TAHA and claims that it is ridiculous to forbid Indian women from wearing hijab-like headcovers when Indian men are not likewise prohibited from wearing topis, caps, berets, fezs, or hats. Ms Ray is immediately remanded to police custody for 24 hours, after which she is investigated by the Indian intelligence services to ascertain if she has any Pakistani connections.

15 June, 2005 : The anti-TAHA movement assumes alarming proportions as thousands of women are incarcerated throughout India and a radical journal even runs a column with the title : 'Why Should Indian Wo/Men Not Cover Their Hair?' Meanwhile, the Home Ministry launches an extravagant series of flashy advertisements, to be put up on gigantic billboards, in order to enlist support for the imminent liberation of Pakistani women. In particular, one of these shows the Hindu goddess, Mother Durga, standing beside a yellow tiger with a handful of long, silky, smooth, and glossy hair, and slicing into two a horrendous black demon with a sharp silver lance. There is a small caption on the body of the slain demon which says 'Pakistani Man' and a note above Mother Durga's head declares 'O Woman, Be Proud Of Your Sacred Hair'.

18 June, 2005 : The following interview between an anonymous Pakistani woman in Rawalpindi and a daring Indian journalist appears on the morning edition of The Times Of India, an interview which sends shockwaves throughout the subcontinent.

Indian journalist, Mr Dhamaka Pratap Singh (DPS) : How would you describe your life in Pakistan?

Pakistani woman (who cannot be named for legal reasons, or more simply, who cannot be named in the absence of her husband; yes, things are really that bad in our neighbouring country) : Can I speak to you under conditions of strict anonymity?

DPS : Sure.

Pakistani woman : Frankly speaking, things are horrible here. I so much wish I could show off my shiny hair to people when I go out shopping, but I have to wear this burdensome hijab. And because I cannot display my hair, I have also lost all interest in washing it, so that I now shampoo it only once a month.

DPS : How often do your friends shampoo their hair?

Pakistani woman : I would suppose at the same frequency. Maybe once a month. Maybe once in two months. Who knows?

DPS : How do you view the proposed liberation of Pakistani women by the Indian armed forces?

Pakistani woman : It is the dream of every Pakistani woman. I was watching New Delhi TV the other night, and there was this shampoo advertisement where one Indian woman says to another : 'How is her hair glossier than mine?' When I saw that ad, oh my, I could have died, you know? I really mean it. I said to myself : To be freed at the hands of these brave Indians, live in a country where I can shampoo my hair every night and show it to all the men the next morning, that would be the closest thing to Paradise on this earth for me.

DPS : Which shampoo would you buy after the Indian liberation?

Pakistani woman : Oh, some Indian shampoo, of course! I mean that will be the least that I shall be able to do for the Indians for what they will have done for us, won't it be? How else will I ever be able to thank them?

25 June, 2005 : Two Indian sociologists at the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva publish a communique, 'Women's Hair And Hygiene : The Case Of Pakistan', in which they state their results on the basis of a five-year long study of Pakistani women from a number of middle-class and upper-class families in Multan, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Islamabad. The analysts claim that the primary reason for the deteriorating health of Pakistani women is that they are unable to think clearly, logically, and coherently, and this is not surprising, so they argue, given the paucity of shampoos in the country. Unable to get rid of lice and all sorts of unnameable entities in the profuse masses of their dense hair, women in Pakistan are driven to higher levels of exasperation, nervousness, and irritation than women in Western countries.

28 June, 2005 : The Pakistani goverment, which had been lying rather low all this while, finally strikes back at its detractors. The Information Ministry publishes a report by a panel of four Pakistani intellectuals (three of them with Princeton Ph.D.s) which states that the hijab has to do not with oppression but with expression; far from feeling oppressed, Pakistani women who don the hijab feel liberated to express themselves in public without having men staring at their silky hair. This ingenious riposte takes much wind out of the Indian sails, but as if this was not enough for the beleaguered Indians, a conglomerate of Pakistani entrepreneurs launches a drive to produce indigenous shampoos for Pakistani women. With its brilliant motto Pakistani shampoo for Pakistani hair they plan to wean away potential Pakistani buyers of Indian shampoos such as the anonymous woman mentioned in the interview published in the Times of India.

1 July, 2005 : The Pakistani cricket team cancels its forthcoming test and one-day series with India, and its captain launches a particularly vicious attack on the Sikh players in the Indian team. How can we be sure, he demands, that the Sikhs keep their hair properly shampoo-ed under their massive turbans?

4 July, 2005 : Mortally wounded by these dazzling (and entirely unexpected) replies, and also troubled with the anti-TAHA fires still raging throughout the country, the Indian Government, after a series of consultations with industrial magnates and army officers, decides to let off a bit of the heat that it had been putting on Pakistan. The final word on this sordid (and hair-raising) saga perhaps belongs to Ms Nazma Azmi, a young Pakistani scholar at the University of Heidelberg who is investigating into certain aspects of the Sufi musical traditions of Mediaeval India. She publishes a glittering article in the Washington Post on 4 July entitled, 'Pakistani Women's Hair : A Weapon Of Mass Distraction?', in which she cogently argues that this episode is emblematic of how governments on either side of the India-Pakistan divide have an inveterate tendency of obscuring genuine issues by puerile talk over war, progress, civilisation, and liberation, and thereby of routinely distracting everyone's attention from the ground issues that are crying out for attention.

It would therefore seem that it is Prof. Skopuropski who shall be entitled to the last laugh over his critics : Yes, the battles of the future shall indeed be fought over the head.