Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King

No one is innocent in a true democracy. A true democracy, in spirit, implies rule of the people, by the people, for the people. This perfect form of democracy is still an unfulfilled vision in our world. It is unfulfilled yet, not because it is unrealizable, but because it is not a vision anymore. It is not a vision anymore because people is an endangered species in the modern world; in some places it has never existed in the first place, and where it does exist, every passing day brings it closer to extinction. It is being replaced by a new species, the silent majority. But what is this silent majority everyone talks about, why is it silent, and is its silence significant?

Silent majority is one of the hottest buzzwords nowadays. Everyone claims to speak for the silent majority and everyone claims to act with the support of the silent majority. I would define silent majority as that segment of a society, which is ambivalent, indifferent and insensitive in its treatment of the different issues, arising from within the society or confronting it from outside. Thus, by its very definition, the silent majority is very easy to manipulate. Now, which segment of a society best fits this definition? Is it the elite, i.e. the feudal lords, the industrialists, the military leadership? There aren’t many issues that can trouble the elite in a society; they already have material prosperity, modern education, power and influence. So they can’t be the silent majority, because, firstly, they are never a majority, and secondly, because they don’t need to speak: they already have everything without asking for it. So, is it then, the lower class, i.e. the proverbial proletariat, the people below the poverty line, the wretched of the earth? This segment of society is no doubt the one that is directly confronted with most of the society’s issues like poverty, illiteracy, disease and exploitation. But is it really the silent majority we are looking for? To me, it seems to be more of a silenced majority, one that does not speak, because it is denied the right to speak, and since it is too busy trying to survive, literally, it is less concerned with demanding the right to speak. So that leaves us with the middle class of the society i.e. the Marxist “bourgeoisie”, the professionals, the businessmen. This segment of society can rightly be identified as a silent majority. Its hands-off approach to civic existence is the outcome of deliberate rejection of civic duty as well as a lack of cultivation of civic values and principles. It has achieved significant material success, academic excellence and social influence, yet it is silent when it comes to social issues, some of which directly concern it. Why is it silent? Because it has nothing to say, because it is afraid to speak, or because it feels who is listening anyway? My answer is: all of the above; and I give this answer because I am, myself, a member of Pakistan’s silent majority.

More than a decade ago, Francis Fukuyama announced “the end of history” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Capitalism and the Free World would triumph globally. There would be no more a cause for humanity to strive for. His vision of the world after the end of history suggested a passive role for the average citizen: “The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, that worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns and the satisfaction of consumer demands”. He seems to have foreseen the advent of the silent majority. One of the main reasons, the silent majority is content to remain silent is that there is no global vision for humanity that provides it with a real cause to strive for. So called global initiatives like environmental movements and Aids prevention campaigns are not those with a universal appeal or relevance. In such an ideological vacuum, consumer culture and globalization moved in. Lofty ideals of emancipation and freedom were replaced by materialist obsessions: the wild fashion wear, the slick cellular phones, the luring laptops and alternative life styles. In short, the fruits of free trade in the free world gradually deprived the citizen of his notion of freedom itself. Human life was reduced to material existence. The middle class of every society in the free world was seized by a frenzy of personal enrichment and materialistic motivation. It lost its ability to think about anything else. In short, very soon it found that it had nothing to say when social issues surfaced in the society.

Educational institutions are the nurseries that nurture the next generations of mankind. Despite globalization and modernization, there are still many countries of the world, especially in the Third World, where education is not accessible to everyone. Even the education that is available globally, has suffered a loss in quality. With the passage of time, we see that there has been a dramatic shift from education to training. Instead of being fountainheads of enlightenment, the modern educational institutions, public or private, are more like training camps run by a profiteering mafia. Curricula based heavily on specialized technical and vocational training have gradually replaced those with a broader knowledge base that encouraged intellectual growth and creative freedom. In the name of specialization, educational institutions today churn out batch after batch of individuals, skilled in specific fields but lacking a holistic knowledge of life itself. These graduates are more like manufactured parts, especially designed to be plugged into the vacant slots of the modern social machinery. The aim of education nowadays, as H. L. Mencken put it, “is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” No wonder then, the educated middle class of today is at a loss for words, when it encounters real-life issues it wasn’t equipped to cope with, during its education. The knee-jerk response of an average middle class citizen, during drawing room parties, to different local and global issues, is a parrot-like playback of opinions the electronic and print media feed him.

Despite all the rhetoric of the success of democracy the world over, the fact remains that democracy and democratic norms are on the decline. Majority of the Third World countries still do not have a democratic society. Most of these countries were former colonies of the European imperial powers in the past. When the colonizers left, they handed over the administrative control of these newly independent countries to their own lackeys: the local elite that had been reared by them for taking over their dirty work once they left. The administrative and social structure that had been put in place by the colonizers was not one intended for sovereign and independent republics. It was one that had been perfected for extortion and subjugation of the colonized at the hands of the colonizer. However, after decolonization, the colonial structures of administration, government and society were inherited without significant changes by most of the newly independent countries. Independent governments, sometimes democratically elected, now use this apparatus of oppression to suppress and exploit their own people. The judicial and legal machinery, as well as the law enforcing agencies in Pakistan, are intrinsically the same in form and function, as they were under the British before Independence. State-controlled mass media extends the control of the State to the mind of the citizen. Dissent of all form is dealt with, in an exemplary fashion, through the use of these colonial mechanisms. Against the backdrop of mass poverty and illiteracy, interrupted procedural democracy maintains the hold of civil-military bureaucracy and corrupt elite on the government. Deliberately arrested development of liberal constitutionalism in the country has left the citizen with no rights, and those that are available to him, can be taken away from him, if he dares to challenge the status quo. Even in Europe, right wing political parties and extremist elements are on the rise. Racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-Nazism are bouncing back. The beacon of liberalism, the USA, is itself in the grip of corporate-democracy, controlled by various SIGs (special interest groups) and multinationals. The hypocritical foreign policies of the USA have left her admirers flabbergasted and her victims vengeful. Lobbying groups have penetrated deep into the media and government offices, clouding the average citizen’s perspective of reality and the leadership’s judgment in affairs of global significance. These mafias try to suppress voices of dissent, through campaigns of slander and character assassination, or by direct harassment and grinding legal actions. One can easily understand, then, why the silent majorities around the world are becoming more and more afraid to speak.

After disillusionment with the system and the corrupt politicians, the masses of the lower classes have become used to live on a day-to-day basis. Their frustration with their ever worsening standard of life and their disenchantment with the promises of change, have made the masses lose interest in calls for a civil campaign. Progressively falling voter turnout is a good indicator of this reality. The elite on the other hand, are entrenched in the colonial structure of domination and are antagonistic to all efforts aimed at breaking the status quo. Thus the silent majority feels justified in believing, who is listening anyway.

Having examined the nature of our silent majority and the reasons for its silence, we can now assess the significance of this silence. September 11 2001 attack on “innocent civilians” in the USA was a wake-up call for the silent majorities of the world. It was an attack on freedom, democracy and the free world, we were told. It was anything but that. The very existence of terrorism today exposes the fallacy of freedom, democracy and the free world. I condemn the September 11 attacks, and I do not mean to justify them, but I do believe that they can be explained. Most terrorists’ anti-US rhetoric has always been based on their naive assertion that the citizens of the United States of America are not innocent. They are guilty because they elect their representatives, and accept these representatives’ policies of using their tax money to oppress millions throughout the world. Ironically, the terrorists have every right to believe that, since that is what the misnomers freedom, democracy and free world would lead them to believe. Isn’t the USA a democracy, with a rule of the people, by the people, for the people? Then how come these people are innocent, the terrorists must wonder. Or are the terrorists really that naive? Maybe they had hoped, for a long time in vain, that the people of the USA would check the US government’s belligerent foreign policies. And maybe they had realized that this would never happen, because there are no people in the US. There is just a silent majority, which goes about its colourful life, unconcerned, while its rulers inflict atrocities on millions around the world, on its behalf, with its money. Intellectual effort, devotion and patience are required to resolve ideological crises. Uneducated, unemployed and wronged young people are the least suited people to resolve the complications of modern democracy. No wonder they decide to believe in the classical paradigm of true democracy and target the people of the states that have wronged them. All of a sudden the silent majority turns into innocent civilians.

These are dangerous and treacherous times, but the art of honourable survival requires that we turn our adversities into opportunities. We, in Pakistan, stand at a critical juncture in our history today. We, the members of the silent majority, have a unique choice presented to us by circumstances. Do we wish to continue our existence as members of a silent majority, till a day some desperate individuals decide to turn us into innocent civilians? Or do we wish to get our act together, as a people, and decide to stay silent no more? The choice is yours. One thing is certain: our honourable survival as a people rquires that we lose our innocence now.