Sultan of swing plays political hardball
TIMES NEWS NETWORK FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2003 01:23:23 AM ]
MUMBAI: For a man who has been known variously as cricket superstar, playboy and politician (women like to keep it simple and call him hunk), Imran Khan has an appealing quality—he’s shy.
Schooled in the art of hustings speak, he can (and does) ad lib with ardour on worthy concerns like the need for “confidence-building measures’’ between India and Pakistan and the importance of fighting corruption in public life. But when the bouncers get personal (and interesting), he blushes and stonewalls.
Example—Does wife Jemima, who has a fashion line, design his clothes? “No, no she doesn’t,’’ he mumbles, visibly embarrassed. Is he still asked whether his marriage to the Goldsmith heiress is a Jewish conspiracy to get Pakistan under American control? “I used to be asked, but it’s fizzled out now,’’ is all he will say. Dressed in a white Pathan suit and embroidered jacket, Mr Khan, who is in the city for the Wisden cricket awards, is taking questions from the media at host Parmeshwar Godrej’s Walkeshwar bungalow ‘Aashraye’, an edifice which sprouts like a glass-and-marble Xanadu from the sea.
It’s been a long day for the cricketer—he’s just flown in from Jeddah, and good Muslim that he is, is running on empty in observance of Ramzan. But there are no smudges of fatigue and he wears his 51 years with consummate savoir faire. After playing the field in more ways than one for the better part of his adult life, the past seven years have been devoted to doing the honourable thing by cause and country.
In some ways, Imran Khan is a Pakistani Tehelka of sorts, a committed but eventually ineffective voice against corruption, whose party Tehreek-e-Insaaf has only one seat in Pakistan ’s national parliament. And although Mr Khan puts the poor showing down to the fact that his party withdrew support to Gen Pervez Musharraf barely two months before the election, leaving voters confused, there is little doubt that for the moment at least, he is like the twelfth man in Pakistani politics.
To his credit, he has foregone offers of cabinet seats and other political cookies to stick by his anti-corruption stand. “No I don’t think I’m being unrealistically idealist,’’ he says. “When the biggest crooks in Pakistan join Gen Musharraf’s party, how could I be part of it? It would have negated everything I stood for.’’ As the skipper who brought home the 1992 World Cup, he was the darling of the establishment but his crusader role has changed all that.
Benazir Bhutto and he were in Oxford together (along with Vikram Mehta, chairman of Shell India), and good friends at that. “But for the last ten years I haven’t really talked to her,’’ he says, adding somewhat sheepishly, “But now we’re on the same side of the fence—anti-Musharraf, I mean.’’ Any political conversation conducted anywhere on the globe today is incomplete without a question on the post 9\11 scenario.
How is Pakistan dealing with its label of “rogue state’’ and accusations of “Islamic terrorism’’? “Contrary to these labels, Pakistan has always been a moderate country,’’ he says. “Religious parties have never won more than six per cent of the seats, it’s always centrist parties which have been voted in. 9\11 shifted the spectrum to the right, but that’s only a temporary shift, and it’s sheerly because of America ’s misconceived arrogance. It was the most ridiculous war on terrorism.
History will show that it’s one of the biggest blunders they committed.’’ It was Pakistan ’s misfortune, says Mr Khan, to lose Mr Jinnah within a year of Partition. “A man of his stature would have nurtured democracy, just like Mr Nehru did in India ,’’ he says. “Of course, we are lagging behind you, but just because a country has elections, it doesn’t mean it’s a democracy—there should be a move to develop an independent judicial system, an accountable bureaucracy and free media.’’
The most positive sign in Pakistan was the opening up of the media. “We have a completely free media, especially the print media,’’ says Mr Khan. “Previously, even when we had a democratic government, the media wasn’t free, so this is tremendous sign.’’ New TV channels had also mushroomed, challenging the official mouthpiece Pakistan Television, which, much like Doordarshan, continued to toe the official line, he said.
But Imran Khan is no stranger to censorship, and has long given in to the diktats of the two censor officials in his life, sons Suleiman and Qassim. “As soon as I switch on to cricket the boys say, ‘Not boring cricket, Abba,’ so I have to change to something else,’’ he laughs. “Usually it’s a wildlife programme.’’