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Narrow win for secularism at debate on Benazir

When the Oxford Union decided, last week, to pay tribute to its celebrated one-time president, Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister, it chose a topic which, despite its comfortingly non-controversial tone, had a pointed message not just for Pakistan but the wider Muslim world caught up in an existential struggle between the idea of an Islamic state and pressures to secularise.

The motion, proposed by a slightly excited African student and opposed by a British Indian speaker who was all over the place with facts, declared that “this House believes that the ideal state is a secular state.”

Union officials were at pains to clarify that the topic was not chosen with Pakistan or Benazir’s assassination in mind.

A spokesman said a debate on the secular state was planned long ago and had nothing to do with the events in Pakistan.

“But the topic seemed so appropriate for such an occasion that we went ahead with it,” he said.

True. It had the potential to generate a lively debate going beyond the motion’s seemingly obvious assertion, especially given the Union’s tub-thumping claim to be the “world’s most prestigious debating society,” with a reputation for brainstorming going back nearly 185 years. There was a sense of anticipation particularly after the word spread that the line-up of speakers included some of Oxford’s brightest debating stars who had won international prizes in verbal duels.

But, alas, it turned out to be one of the most uninspiring debates I have ever attended in a long time, and at the end of the two-hour ordeal, one was left wondering whether all those stories about the Oxford Union’s “famous” debates were not just that: tall stories. At least this one never rose above the level of a poor high school debate with vacuous arguments compounded by an embarrassing lack of seriousness and factual errors — like the claim that Pakistan is a secular state.

Such was the paucity of ideas that one “clinching” argument advanced in support of a secular state was that it allowed greater personal freedoms such as “cross-dressing” and homosexuality, only to be challenged by an Indian student who pointed out that in secular India homosexuality was a criminal offence for which the punishment ranged from imprisonment for ten years to life. In contrast, Britain, officially a Christian state with an established Church, had gone to the extent of recognising gay partnerships.

Most speakers on either side of the divide were out of their depths — mixing up concepts, indulging in sweeping generalisations, and failing to reveal any new insight. The cut and thrust (the occasional repartee, the humorous one-liners) that makes a debate interesting and distinguishes it from classroom banter, was sorely missing prompting many in the audience to leave half way through the evening.

So, what went wrong?

Maybe it just happened to be one of those rare off-days when things did not work; or maybe Oxford undergraduates are more comfortable debating less complex issues and made a mistake picking a subject that was clearly way beyond their competence. Or is it simply the fact that Oxford’s debating standards have fallen without anyone having bothered to notice?

Whatever be the cause, Benazir, who was herself apparently a keen debator, would not have approved. Her contemporaries recalled that one of the most memorably provocative Oxford Union debates was held under her watch when she took on the stuffy male-dominated Oxford Establishment with the motion: “This House likes dominating women.”

The verbal blows exchanged that evening years ago are still remembered by old students with a touch of nostalgia for an era when, as one of them put it, “Oxford was Oxford and ideas mattered.”

For some strange reason, Benazir’s son Bilawal, who was in the audience with his aunt Sanam Bhutto, was not given a chance either to participate in the debate or pay tribute to his mother.

One Union activist tamely explained that since Bilawal had been at Oxford only for a term and was a new member of the Union he did not qualify. What? Not qualified even to pay tribute to his own mother?

The homage came from two of Benazir’s close friends — Tory MP Alan Duncan and writer Victoria Schofield, both former Union presidents. They remembered her as someone who was a cut above the rest. The fact that Benazir was the first-ever Asian woman to be elected president of the Union got her into history books. And then there was her pedigree — being the daughter of Zulfiqar Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan at the time, opened doors for her and she unabashedly enjoyed all the attention she got.

Mr. Duncan and Ms Schofield portrayed her as “fiery,” “fun-loving” and as one of the most “colourful of characters” who did the odd pub-crawl and didn’t hesitate to let her hair down when the occasion demanded — a Benazir very different from the image she was to cultivate later to become politically more acceptable in a conservative Muslim country.

Back to the debate. It was not a proud day for those who batted for secularism. In the end, the motion might have been carried but it was a struggle as the final vote showed. A measure of how badly the argument was presented, and how poor the debate was.

But, strangely, we didn’t notice any red faces at the Union.

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