Op-Ed: I fled Pakistan to live in a democracy. Republican gerrymandering risks my freedom.

By: Azher Khan Featured in the IndyStar

Having seen democracy fail many times in my homeland of Pakistan, I have a unique perspective on gerrymandering in Indiana. I have lived through what happens when democracy stops working. I came to the U.S. in 1972, following the 1971 war with India, In which Pakistan lost half the country and East Pakistan become an independent county called Bangladesh. Ruled by a military dictator, the people of East Pakistan felt un-represented and discriminated against leading to a civil war, countless lives lost, dreams shattered, and the eventual break up of the country.

I came to this country for the promise of the American dream. I knew about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and was eager to raise children and eventually grandchildren in a place where their voices were truly represented. Immigrants from my generation may take America’s one-person one-vote system for granted since we arrived after the Civil Rights movement. We acquired our privileges because of the African American quest for full equality that continues.

I have been fortunate to have exercised my fundamental right to vote for the past almost four decades. I believe now we are reversing the successes gained in voting rights by again disenfranchising voters — by partisan gerrymandering.

The proposed house and congressional maps show that my congressional district, IN-05,  has been re-drawn such that it is less diverse and as a result invariably will be less competitive. Whereas our country, and our state are becoming more diverse, the proposed district is even more homogenous than before; the maps are clearly manipulated to create an uncompetitive and unfair system, which is an act of voter suppression.  I am even more of a minority in my district now.

I have become a single-issue political activist. I joined the Women4Change redistricting committee, and we are actively working on voter’s rights, including the redistricting process. I am also an active volunteer who invests time and resources to organizations that further and preserve our democracy and defend recent attacks on our election.

Preserving and strengthening our democracy is above economic reform to tax policy, is above foreign policy or any domestic agenda. Everything is secondary to our foundational democratic processes, without which our nation as we know it, with all its prosperity and freedoms, will cease to exist – much like I witnessed first-hand in Pakistan.

As a businessman, I have always believed in the American ideal of fair and free competition and as an American, I believe we should aspire more from our democracy.  For democracy to persevere and flourish, it needs its citizen to be educated, engaged, and alert. 

In Pakistan, democracy died at the hands of multiple military coups, the last of which came as recently as 1999. However, the world over, more democracies have been usurped by manipulating and engineering the democratic process. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book, How Democracies Die, write, “the primary way in which democracies have died since the end of the Cold War, over the last 30 years or so, is at the hands of elected leaders, at the hands of governments that were often freely or close to freely elected, who then use democratic institutions to weaken or destroy democracy.”

We must not let elected leaders dictate the maps of our state in a way that weakens voters’ voices. All votes should count. 

Azher Khan is chairman of Calderon Textiles in Indianapolis. He lives in Zionsville.