The Follies of the Natives

Pakistan seems to be confronted by the metaphor of Robert Frost’s poem and it is only an idle question, which seeks to answer, whether it chooses the road less traveled. In the last nearly three score years of its existence, it has traveled a road that seems to be ending in a cul-de-sac. The tragedy is that Pakistan has journeyed so far on this road that it has transgressed beyond the “fail-safe” point and the now, does not really have the option to retrace its steps. It can journey onwards, but the end of the journey culminates in a destination, which bodes ill for Pakistan and which, when considered in balance with the international environment, is the least attractive of all choices available to it. There is nothing to be gained from crying and the blaming the stars for our misfortune and that is one thing, which we a nation must stoutly refrain from doing.

Too often, Pakistanis have blamed the entire world for the state of their misery, but have seldom ever thought about blaming themselves. It seems that we have abdicated our sense of responsibility and have adopted a fatalistic outlook on life that has convinced us that we are the perpetual victims of a cosmic conspiracy. Pakistanis seem to be lost in a haze of questions, but are afraid to dare and answer those questions lest their national and ideological artificiality becomes too self-evident. In many ways, we as a nation seem to have never reconciled ourselves to the fact that we are an independent nation and have been since 1947. Our politics is about agitation and we oppose, who ever is in the government, because for the sake of opposition, and we have no new ideas to offer; no thoughts on good governance and no solutions for the host of problems, which gnaw at our social conscience. We are a confused nation and nothing illustrates this point better than the story of a Briton, who came to the Punjab Club, in Lahore, for dinner. The British gentleman was new to Pakistan, having come here for the first time and being invited for dinner to the club, decided to attend in the national dress of Pakistan – the shawalar and kameeze – as a sign of respect. He hoped that his hosts would appreciate his gesture, but to his surprise, he was refused admission to the club, because he was not wearing a tie and a jacket!

On the surface, we are an independent nation, but deep in our national psyche we are enslaved. We suffer from the worst sort of colonialism and that is, the colonialism of the mind. Mentally, we have never accepted the fact that we are a free people and we still hunger for the trappings of colonialism. We have adopted the ways of our British masters and we judge the character of our fellow citizens by the fluency of their accent in English. Our police ordinance, which governs the conduct of police in our society traces its lineage to the 1860s, when it was created not to “serve and protect” the local citizenry, but to keep them cowed down and make them obey the imperial pronouncements of an unrepresentative power. The police in Pakistan was never created to serve and protect, but to safeguard the interests of the ruling party and it is no wonder, that police is so eager to lift the bamboo cane and smash skulls regardless of who is in power. Oppression in the name of law and order is the only thing, which it understands. The old masters may have gone, but the natives and the dogs are still not allowed in the hallow enclaves of power and influence and vassals of the lords in the uniforms still take pride in their colonial titles of “district commissioners”.

The servants of the public are devoted towards making the public serve them and fete their dreams of avarice. Elections are held and new crops of politicians are elected and the nation is open for business, once more, like a cheap bordello. Democracy in Pakistan stagnates at the level of holding elections and stuffing the ballots to elect, whom the demi-gods of this nation deem worthy to lord over a starving, forsaken and ignored sea of cursed humanity. Democracy in Pakistan is the utopian wish for a few, who are alienated from the rest of the nation and the benefits of democracy is only limited to a group of people, who read English language newspapers at breakfast and practice the idolatry of constitutionalism. Not a single champion of democracy in Pakistan considers the effort worth to spread the boon of democracy to the villages, where the vast unrepresentative majority of this nation lives under slaves like conditions and neither, do they promise to free their fellow countrymen and countrywomen from the clutches of feudalism.

No one bothers to ask what democracy means to the person, who is dying from a lack of water. No one is interested to bring justice to the man, whose daughter has been gang raped and, but they are more than willing to give the raped victim an envelope full of cash. The cash, it is thought, will wash away the sin; it will erase the culpability of the government, which allowed an injustice to happen and did nothing to bring the perpetuators to justice. The poor girl, victim to a state sponsored crime, may be disgraced, but she will at least remain disgraced in nice clothes. What is more, in a society where money is the imprimatur of acceptability, giving money to a rape victim implies that that rape is acceptable and the money will balm the painful memories. Is it any wonder, why democracy is often considered with the same sentiments as the local jirga, which condoned the rape?

Democracy in Pakistan does not mean the representation of the publics’ interest, but the advancement of the political careers of the elected representatives in Pakistan. The national assemblies of Pakistan are not a place, where legislation is passed and new laws for the betterment of its citizens debated. The national and provincial assemblies of Pakistan are places, where the ill-begotten money is displayed; where acrimonious arguments are heard challenging who has the right to a better office, more staff workers, better living accommodations and more privileges in the form of new official cars proudly displaying black colored grimy and pollution stained national flags. The halls of democracy in Pakistan are places where Faustian bargains are made to curtail democracy and its imported marble halls ring to hollow laughter and the self-indulgent whispers of political barons, who consider the national trust in the same vein they consider the ritualistic movement of the bowels in their air conditioned bathrooms. It is simply an after thought and after each act, the washing of the hands cleans away any evidence of the soiled act. What does democracy mean and what does democracy really amounts to in a government of illiterates by the illiterates and for the illiterates? The only democracy that exists in Pakistan is when there is a general consensus on how to loot and plunder the commonwealth of the nation and the wealth of the nation is a common right for those in power to claim it as their own right of primogeniture.

It could be a joke if it was a not a sin, but why is democracy so cherished to us, Pakistanis, and we fight for its sake each time a military government discards it. Where was our love for democracy, when our elected representatives were busily engaged in undemocratic practices? Why must we yearn for democracy and wish its return and why could we not display the same levels of concern for democracy whilst we were in office? In Pakistan, we equate democracy with elections and an elected parliament and no accountability. Democracy is not about elections. Democracy is about the peaceful transfers of power from one government to another and it is about tolerance of and for dissenting opinions. Democracy is about the allowance of the peoples’ judgment and the acceptance of that judgment. When was the last time the people of Pakistan were allowed to have a judgment and when was their judgment ever accepted? What is democracy? Is it an excuse for the western educated children of the demi-gods of Pakistan to practice their rudimentary skills in Robert’s rules of parliamentary debate? Or, democracy is the socialist nom d’ plume for the sons of the agrarian manor houses of Pakistan to make sure that the distribution of the spoils does not exceed their grasp.

There is a favorite past time in Pakistan and it is called “place the blame” and everyone plays it. The object of this game is to determine, who is responsible for the sordid mess of Pakistani polity. The all time favorite excuse is the Pakistan armed forces and their institutional interests in Pakistani politics. There is no denying that the army is responsible for its share of blame in prodding Pakistan to the edge of the plank. The military likes to self describe itself as the ideological defender of Pakistan and no one ever questioned it’s judgment. It would be interesting to ask the question, because it would instructive to know how the military in Pakistan intends to defend an abstract noun. Still, to be fair to the military, one has to accept their claim of defending Pakistan, because it is after all, their property and if the military will not defend Pakistan, then who will? The citizens of Pakistan can try to defend Pakistan, but why should they defend Pakistan, when they have no claims to it? Pakistani citizens can attempt to do so, but the military will deny them the right.

The Pakistani military’s idea of defending Pakistan is akin to a monopoly and it does not like any competitors. Defending Pakistan is a good business and the grateful nation thanks its benefactors, with free phone bills, free electric power, free gasoline and free servants. Hence, all these perks are needed to off set the paltry salaries of the military officers, because not all Pakistani military officers are the richest generals in the world. The reason democracy never seems to thrive in Pakistan is, because Pakistan is a combination between a timocratic state and a corporatist state. A corporatist state is that where economic monopolies rule everything and the nation is a political pyramid of economic cartels and they rule in the self-perpetuation of their own interests. At the top of each economic cartel sits a general of the Pakistani army. He makes sure the interests of his institution are protected and as long as the Pakistani armed forces’ interests are appeased, everyone has a ticket and everyone takes a ride on the Ferris wheel of the economic rape of Pakistan.

On the other hand, Pakistan is a timocracy and a timocratic nation is one, where the right to public office is based on the personal wealth and the amount of the land owned. Is it any a surprise that the army chief of staff ends up in power. After all, he gets to own the best lands in Pakistan and he in turn, gives out a portion of the land to his vassals to rule and govern for him. The vassals have only a few obligations to him in return for getting the land. They must promise him regular taxes, maintain law and order and provide him with manpower for his wars and promise to entertain him, when he comes for a visit to his fiefs under their caretaker authority. In return, the vassals are nominated as the governors or as chief ministers of the provinces in Pakistan. They are endowed to have their own vassals and to impose their own rule under the indulgence of their overall lord and master in Rawalpindi. The vassals of the lord are allowed to fight one another in the name of provincial rights and autonomy and the curia of this corporatist-timocratic hierarchy of power is the inner sanctum of the army’s corps commanders. They advice their master and he rules by their consent and consensus, pulling the strings of the puppets as they wish and the nation applauds and asks the puppet master for an encore performance!

The analogy of the puppet show is apt, because politics in Pakistan is a symbiotic relationship between the politicians and the military. Like the ying and the yang, both need each other and one, without the other, is handicapped. The average Pakistani may loathe both the politicians and the military, but the military and the politicians understand that like a “good cop-bad cop routine”, they are indispensable to the nation. The beauty of the trick is that they have convinced the gullible population of Pakistan that one of them can be truly held as the culprit in derailing democracy in Pakistan. While the nation argues, fights and kills to prove one side right and the other side wrong, the politicians and military sit back and enjoy the spectacle, because the nation does not realize that they, the military and the politicians, are the two sides of the same worthless coin. They are a dyarchy and together, they constitute the government of Pakistan and every time the Pakistanis get tired of military rule, they are given democracy and when they complain that democracy is not working, the military rule is re-imposed over a thankful nation and the Pakistanis line the streets to welcome the conqueror on his pale white horse and thus, the endless cycle continues.

Playing the role of the supporting actor, but dominating the script, in this surreal drama are the religious clergy of Pakistan. Pakistan, as a nation, was created in the name of religion and religion has influenced Pakistan in ways, which cannot be adequately described. Pakistan is the only muslim nation in the world, which needs a constitutional declaration to be a muslim state. We, Pakistanis, are Muslims by a constitutional fiat and not by the dignity of our birth or the religion of our forefathers. We require a constitutional clause to tell us that we are Muslims, and we believe that Islam is not a way of life, but codex of legalities. The clergy of Pakistan, at one point in time, hated the idea of Pakistan, but then had a change of hearts and assumed for themselves the mantle of being the only pious muslims in the world. Everyone in Pakistan can trace their ancestry to the advent of Islam in the Arabian peninsula and we all migrated to India, either with Muhammad Bin Qasim. We are proud of our lineage, but our lineage is only limited to approximately 1400 years ago, because our ancestors did not exist before the arrival of Islam in this world.

Pakistan, thanks to the instructions of its myopic clergy, has adopted a view of Islam, which would make Don Torquemada, of the Spanish Inquisition fame, proud. The clergy believe that Pakistan is destined for a blessed after life and that is, why they are so eager to see that it is bombed, irradiated and wiped from existence. According to their worldview, the sooner Pakistan is destroyed as a nation, the sooner the “real life” in the after world will begin. They all believe that they will be gifted with vestigial virgins, even though most of them are nothing more than eunuchs masquerading as virile defenders of the faith. The clergy of Pakistan’s most preferred method of reproduction is of the asexual variety, because they are determined to kill all the females in Pakistan in the name of honor. Once all the females are killed, the clergy of Pakistan will self-divide and then, they will seek a peaceful existence in a utopian land of their dreams. The clergy of Pakistan want Pakistan to be a country operated on the principles of sharia, or the Islamic law. Their idea of Islam, which they want to impose in Pakistan, is based on exactly the same socio-conditions, which existed in Arabia before the arrival of Islam. Islam, according to them will be genocidal, xenophobic, oppressive, regressive and based on superstition instead of enlightenment.

The salient caveat to their plans is that they want a coercive Islam, and are of the opinion that everyone should follow the strictures of Islam. The only group to be excluded from this straitjacketed version of Islam will be the clergy themselves, because God has given them special privileges and they are not bound by His laws, but their accountability is limited to their own political interests and how much of the law they can violate. The clergy of Pakistan are nothing more than a well organized and a vocal political party and they know as much about religion, as a pig knows about the Sabbath. Islam to them is their ticket to political power, because the idea is so simple, as to be simply brilliant. They have equated, and the nation has accepted, their role as the guardians of Islam and as their faux-religious political ambitions are cloaked within the robes of Islam, they cannot be held accountable or questioned. Religion has given them an eternal exclusion from accountability, because they are only accountable to Allah.

To question them and their policies is to question Islam itself and an excuse to be drawn and quartered and killed. Their devotion to Islam and protecting its message is based on the simple hypothesis that are two versions of Islam; one for the nation and one for themselves and the version they follow, allows for the sins they blame and seek to punish in others. One does not need the eloquence of a Winston Churchill or the diction of an Abraham Lincoln to realize that the description, which best quantifies them is the word, “hypocrite”. These hypocrites ended up with power, because their most potent political ally is the sense of legitimacy, which both the civilian and the military governments in Pakistan crave. Every government in Pakistan, which has seen its legitimacy eroded, has made desperate paeans to it and the chimera of Islam, and in re-molding itself as being pro-Islamic, has sought an excuse to pardon all its flaws and perpetuate its rule. The religious parties have grown, politically, blood thirsty and rapacious, because the succeeding governments in Pakistan have appeased their megalomaniac perversion for political power.

In this, the greatest friend and benefactor of the religiously intolerant in Pakistan, is the judiciary of Pakistan. The judiciary of Pakistan is the only judiciary in the world, which defies the imagination at the laws it has passed and considered as valid constitutional interpretations. The judiciary of Pakistan has condoned martial laws, created a second class of citizenship in Pakistan, and it has given new meaning to justice. Justice is really blind in Pakistan. Justice may be blind in Pakistan, but it does recognize the sound of money and will gladly dance to the tune of money and influence in Pakistan. The judiciary has been a handmaiden to each singular act of usurpation of political power and it seems that the job of the judiciary is not interpret the constitution, but discover ways to condone its annihilation. It speaks volumes for the commitment of the judiciary to Pakistan’s democratic aspirations, when one considers the following facts. During the confused years, following partition, when Pakistan was eeking an existence under the Government of India Act, 1935, a future precedent was created and because of this, democracy was suffocated in Pakistan.

When a case was brought to Justice Constantine on whether to allow the Constituent Assembly to function or not, the learned justice allowed its existence. Justice Constantine argued that that under the Government of India Act, 1935 Pakistan was a free nation and when this verdict was challenged, the infamous Justice Munir reasoned that use of the Government of India Act, 1935, as the constitution of Pakistan, and suggested that Pakistan was not a free nation and hence, the Constituent Assembly was summarily dismissed! Which brings us a full circle to the observation that we, Pakistanis, do not think that we are a free nation and instead, we seem to have abdicated all our responsibilities to Allah. Maybe, we did this, because we do not like being blamed for the mess, we have created in Pakistan and since the fate of Pakistan was Allah’s Will, there is nothing much we can do, but cry to the stars for our misfortune. Our logic allows us to rationalize our reasons, but our reasons do not rationalize an excuse for not holding us as culpable for own misdeeds. Our national mea culpa is our national ideology and we never question it, because we know where the blame lies and the blame lies with us.

Pakistan will never progress as long as we are determined to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that we do not see the danger. The danger does originate from various directions, but the foremost danger comes from our refusal to think for ourselves. We should realize that the Torah, the Bible and the Quran are the books, whose author is the same and what we disagree is not on the authenticity of the author, but on the translations and the transliterations. There is no crime in reading any of the aforementioned books and to them, we can be add Das Kapital, Mein Kampf or the Satanic Verses. The crime is only that having read all these books, we do not think for ourselves. We as a nation are intolerant, because we genuinely believe that we have a monopoly on the truth and those that disagree with us are heretics. Maybe, we are the heretics, because we disagree with everyone one else! The greatest obstacle to the development of Pakistan is not some Hindu-Zionist-Mossad-CIA-RAW conspiracy, but the Pakistanis themselves and it seems that as long as Muslims rule Pakistan; it will neither be a Muslim state nor develop. Why? We are own worst enemies and the world does not hate Pakistan, as much as it hates Pakistanis and what they exemplify.

It is debatable as to what is the most expedient reason; to lament or to pity a nation created in the name of Islam, which still cannot define its ideology or raison d’ etre 56 years after its creation. Is our faith so weak that we cannot be considered as Muslim, unless legally specified? There are only questions and the all the answers being, with “why?” but we opt to answer with “…because…”. Is there hope for Pakistan? In his opus, Dante travels through the Seven Levels of Hell and when he reaches the seventh level, he discovers that it is frozen and as long as there is a snowball’s chance of surviving in hell, there will hope for Pakistan!