Trajectories of tragic events in Pakistan have sidelined some of the fundamental political issues of the country. One of the most important issues, hardly discussed by politicians and the media, is the revival of the local government system. Without an effective and participatory local government system, democracy hangs in the air. That is precisely one of the reasons that the democratic dispensation in this country is thrown away easily by undemocratic forces.
Unfortunately, history shows that all military dictators have relied heavily on the elected local governments for support because they strike down the provincial and federal representative system. On the other hand, whenever there has been an elected democratic government in the country, they have disbanded the elected local governments. With all its faults, the local government system as given by the Musharraf government was a good initiative. Undoubtedly, the major defect in Musharraf’s local government system was that it was imposed from above. While the provinces were not given their due rights, the federal government imposed the system from the top. Under this system, two elections were held and people were more or less happy because they thought their local problems would be tackled through locally elected councillors.
But the main problem was that the bureaucracy, which was made subservient to the local nazims, was not happy and the provincial and National Assembly representatives did not like the emergence of a local leadership, even though, in many cases, the local nazims and councillors were their own scions or protégés.
The local government laws have now to be passed by the provincial assemblies for their respective provinces. This means that they will have to agree to share power at the local level. That is the reason that, in spite of having over a year, they have not moved to pass the bill. Initially, in Sindh, the MQM was pushing for the Local Government Bill but its senior coalition partner wanted to cut the powers of the local government and its control on the bureaucracy so that the provincial government had more say in local matters. The result is that the law has been shifted to the backburner. Other provincial governments are also not very enthusiastic about it.
In another survey conducted by A C Nielson, it emerged that the provincial leaders and the bureaucracy were also concerned about the “devolution of authority for policing; discretionary powers in by-law enforcement and administrative control over land registry and revenue collection. In many regions of the country, this has accentuated existing tendencies towards the elite capturing the local governments. This contributed to a deterioration of law and order and increased crime.”
The elected provincial officials and bureaucrats have openly supported the idea of abrogating the 2001 Local Government Ordinance (LGO) and returning to the 1979 LGO. They base their case on the problems caused by bureaucratic subordination to local elected politicians, deterioration of law and order and the inability of local governments to enforce laws and regulations.
The media, which claims to be the champion of the common man’s problems, is not raising the issue as it is overwhelmed by federal and provincial government issues. According to a survey, ‘Media coverage of election reforms and local elections in Pakistan’, conducted by an NGO [Intermedia with the support of Democracy Reporting International (DRI)] last year, the local government issues remained a low priority for the media. They analysed the coverage of electoral issues by 25 national and regional newspapers and five local language TV channels in all four provinces.
The findings of this survey were that “almost all relevant news items were reported on the inside pages of newspapers, indicating the low level of importance attached by newspapers (or institutional capacity to report). There was more coverage in south Punjab and Sindh and lower levels of coverage in north Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Prime time TV was blank on the local elections issue with almost no coverage of electoral reforms and the local elections in all four provinces,” that “local language media were relatively more responsive, while the space given by the English language media was very limited,” that the “majority of stories were based on press releases with very few news generated by the reporters themselves,” that “there were very few editorials, commentaries, analyses, features or investigative reports. There was no attempt to educate the media consumers, merely to provide routine information on the subject,” and that “few news stories addressed the upcoming local elections; the vast majority addressed the performance of the present/outgoing local administrations. The election process and electoral reforms had almost no coverage.”
The A C Nielsen survey findings show overwhelming support for maintaining control of service delivery in local governments. Only a small minority support federal or provincial control. This finding contradicts statements from some provincial authorities that the “general public” wants the local government system to be rolled back. The survey results suggest the exact opposite: “In the provision of household services, the tehsils did not fare well — the respondents favoured a strong role for the union councils. The survey results suggest that citizens want more localised service provision, which would lend support for going back to local governments for each urban place by reactivating the town and city governments. Another policy-relevant finding was with respect to the role of the union councils. On almost all measures of accountability, access and responsiveness, they received the most positive mentions of any level of government. Despite the fact that the unions do not provide any social services or household services, by virtue of their frequent face-to-face interactions with their community they appear to play a key role in representing citizens’ concerns and resolving specific problems with higher levels of government. This might also help to explain why the respondents did not feel strongly about the need for direct elections to districts and tehsils; in contrast, there was a large majority in favour of keeping the direct elections to unions.”
As the major political parties that are in the federal and provincial government feel that their popularity is dwindling owing to the incumbency factor, it seems they are reluctant to expose themselves to local government elections, lest they lose most of the tehsil and union councils. But they fail to recognise that most of the common man’s priorities, as the survey shows, are of gutter and garbage management, safe drinking water, improved education system, better roads and healthcare facilities. And these priorities are in that order. These basic amenities can be best delivered by an elected local government.
Simultaneously, elected local governments will provide a sound foundation to the hanging democracy of the country, mobilise the political parties’ local workers and galvanise them to counter extremist elements in their constituencies — only if the party line is clear on this most dangerous issue faced by the country.
The writer can be reached at ayazbabar@gmail.com
ROVER’S DIARY: Democracy hangs in the air —Babar Ayaz - Tuesday, January 18, 2011
COMMENT: Of law and justice —Abbas Rashid - Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The tragic murder of the Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, in broad daylight in Pakistan’s capital is testimony to the profound crisis that envelops us now both as state as well as society. Murder in cold blood by a guard who thought that in doing so he was serving the cause of Islam is also indicative of the ways in which many of us have come to believe that Islam is best served. The governor’s reservations over the law on blasphemy had to do with its frequent misuse to settle personal scores. He supported a poor woman, Aasia Bibi, in the belief that she was innocent, not because he valued the sanctity of the Prophet (PBUH) any less than anyone else. While the victims of the misuse of the law have often been minorities, not infrequently they have been Muslims. In any case, if he was wrong about the misuse of the law or in his presumption of her innocence, the matter would have been dealt with by the courts. Leaders of politico-religious parties, who participate in elections and are ostensibly committed to democratic principles, could have certainly done better than justifying the act. Some sections of the media and the legal fraternity have also gone out of their way to, in effect, condone the murder and lionise the killer. So much for the crucial role of the former in educating the people and of the latter in upholding the rule of law! And, yet again, the mainstream parties, not least the PPP, is found lacking.
Obviously the objective of ensuring the sanctity of the Prophet (PBUH) is a major and common concern for Muslims wherever they live. But the means or laws put in place to ensure this may differ. The laws meant to prevent blasphemy in different Muslim countries are not necessarily the same as ours. Even in the subcontinent the law has developed over time. One can go back to relevant provisions in the 1860 British Penal Code but it was in 1927 that India’s British rulers made it a criminal offence to commit “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religious belief”. During Ziaul Haq’s time the law was not only changed, it was changed more than once. Many now have come to believe that it has always existed in its current form. Regardless, we are bound to ensure that, even more than in the case of any other law, this one in particular is not misused for political or personal gain. Unfortunately, those who have sought to do so in growing numbers since the dictatorship of Ziaul Haq have taken advantage of the fact that under the law, as it stands, they do not have to establish motive on the part of anyone they may accuse. So that anything said or done, even inadvertently, can also be construed as breach of sanctity and comes within the ambit of the law and is punishable by death. And, in the given circumstances, lower courts are much more likely to presume guilt rather than innocence on the part of the accused.
In any case, the government has made it clear that it has no intention of changing the law so the agitation on this issue should come to an end. But how its misuse can be prevented remains a matter of concern for obvious reasons and should be appropriately addressed in the pursuit of justice. Meanwhile, something has to be done about the phenomenon of frequent and unchecked incitement to violence that threatens to overwhelm us. And here the higher judiciary too must play its role. Incitement to violence, on whatever grounds, must be dealt with under the law of the land. In that context, the threats being made against MNA Sherry Rehman must be strongly condemned by political and religious leaders and taken note of by the courts. The relevant provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) can be used to prosecute those who create an environment that encourages violence or by word and deed promote hatred among different groups. It is for all concerned to enforce the constitutional provision under Article 9: “No person shall be deprived of life or liberty, save in accordance with law.”
It is a sign of the times that even a scholar of Islam such as Allama Javed Ahmed Ghamidi apparently felt constrained to leave Pakistan for another Muslim country. It might be worth reflecting here on the fact that even the more liberal sections of society had little to offer him by way of support and encouragement for his enlightened views. Nearly half a century ago another enlightened scholar of Islam, Dr Fazlur Rehman, found himself bereft of support and left Pakistan under pressure from those unwilling to countenance debate on how the cause of Islam in contemporary conditions is best served. One should add here that those who seek a more just and equitable society in Pakistan need to focus elsewhere as well. The liberal creed of the majority of the people is evidenced not least by the very small percentage of the vote consistently garnered by the politico-religious parties in successive elections. Meanwhile, however, between regular bouts of military rule, through the unchecked — if not encouraged — rise of extremism and elite-capture in the name of democracy, we have managed to create one of the most inequitable societies on the face of the planet. One way or the other, this will result in the radicalisation of large sections of society with its inevitable consequences. Among other things, unless our elite/establishment is able to read the writing on the wall and in its own enlightened self-interest is willing to dispense with some of the multiple subsidies that it continues to award itself, the crisis of society and the state is only set to deepen.
The writer lives in Lahore and can be contacted at abbasrh@gmail.com
Might is right, according to the right - Irfan Husain - January 15, 2011
TO show that Pakistan does not have a monopoly on hate and intolerance, a thoughtful American reader has sent me a link to the website of Politics Daily.
Here, I learned that members of the Westboro Baptist Church were planning to picket the funeral of Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year-old victim of Jared Loughner, the Arizona killer who shot a number of others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
The reason for the protest is that little Christina was a Catholic, and as the Westboro Baptist Church website proclaims, “God hates Catholics”. On this website there is a video clip of Pastor Fred Phelps “thanking God for the deadly killings”. Apparently, he feels that Ms Giffords was visited by God`s wrath in the form of Loughner for her support of gay rights.
While these primitive views are similar to the support Mumtaz Qadri is receiving from lawyers and clerics following his assassination of Salman Taseer, there are notable differences in the public reaction. For instance a number of citizens are planning a counter rally in which they will wear angels` wings and surround the Westboro protesters. In Pakistan, ordinary people fear to confront the mullahs who are now setting the agenda through violence and threats.
But there are other eerie similarities between the two crimes. Both Pakistan and the United States are deeply divided societies, with liberals at odds with nationalistic and dogmatic elements. Obama`s election revealed these fault lines where the rift between Republican `red` states and Democratic `blue` ones was underlined yet again.
The conservative heartland includes Arizona, the state where the recent massacre took place. Here guns are popular, with sales spiking 50 per cent after Obama`s election. Indeed gun-related violence has accounted for a million American deaths since Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in 1968. The fact that a mentally disturbed character like Loughner could buy a semi-automatic pistol over the counter shows how easy it is to buy weapons in America.
In Pakistan, despite tough licensing laws on side-arms, there is a flood of illegal weapons across the country. In Karachi you can hire a Kalashnikov by the day. If you pay for a weapon in the tribal areas, an original or a fake will be delivered at your doorstep anywhere in Pakistan, no questions asked.
More than weapons, the high levels of hate in both countries make violence part of the landscape. Crime and politics both contribute to the rising temperature. But one should not read too much into these parallels: America is still deeply wedded to the rule of law while we have abandoned any pretence at legal safeguards and effective policing.
In the wake of the Arizona killings American lawyers did not gather to shower rose petals on the killer, as their counterparts did on Qadri at a Rawalpindi courtroom. And apart from a small group from the Westboro Baptist Church, religious extremists did not stage rallies in Loughner`s support across America as Pakistani mullahs have done for Salman Taseer`s assassin.
But America does have a long history of political assassinations, ranging from Abraham Lincoln to JFK. While the National Rifle Association endlessly plugs the line “Guns don`t kill people: people kill people”, the fact is that the easy availability of guns makes it possible for angry adults and disturbed teenagers to shoot at the slightest pretext. In the UK, where it is almost impossible to legally own a pistol, gun-related violence is among the lowest in the world.
Over the years the NRA has come to acquire an inordinate amount of political clout. Now, no mainstream politician even talks about reforming the country`s relaxed gun laws. The hunting lobby is powerful, with candidates for high office having to trudge off on hunting expeditions to prove their pro-gun credentials. Sarah Palin is a prime example of the hunting-shooting `Mama Grizzly` stereotype she extols.
These lax laws are underpinned by the American constitution that upholds every citizen`s right to bear arms. The political right is fierce in its determination to prevent any amendments that might water down this right. Of course at the time this clause was inserted the new republic was under threat, and the concept of a citizen militia to defend it motivated the founding fathers.
No such danger exists now, even though some right-wing groups insist that Washington wants to place America under the control of a mysterious `world government`. Many nuts spread this bizarre conspiracy theory and stockpile veritable arsenals of automatic weapons that could put a Third World army to shame.
Faced with this growing right-wing movement, liberals find themselves at a huge disadvantage. For one, they normally respect the rule of law and tend to be non-violent. Accustomed to reasoned discourse, they are not equipped for the kind of hysterical and overheated rhetoric that is the stock in trade of channels like Fox News.
In Pakistan, although extremists enjoy little public support as demonstrated time and again in national elections, they still manage to call the shots and dictate the agenda through their bullying, and their claim to a monopoly on religious matters. Liberals are cowed down before their relentless onslaught and are unable to match the kind of street power the mullahs can summon.
Increasingly, liberal views are being drowned out as reactionary voices dominate the airwaves. TV channels, in a race for viewers and advertising, give space to the most right-wing personalities. Liberals are isolated and accused of somehow being lesser Muslims and harbouring pro-western views.
A similar smear campaign is being run against liberals in America. Barack Obama has been accused not just of being a closet Muslim by a majority of Republicans, but is believed by many to having falsified his birth certificate to prove that he was born in the United States, as the constitution requires. These lies and distortions are aimed at keeping the Democrats off-balance and on the defensive.
Such are the tried and tested tactics of the ultra right. Just as Salman Taseer is being accused posthumously of having blasphemed by his criticism of the blasphemy laws, so Obama is accused of being a socialist who wants to nationalise American industries. Both charges are absurd, but then truth is seldom something that restrains the reactionary right.
irfan.husain@gmail
Tactical retreat or total defeat? - Cyril Almeida - January 14, 2011
HOW do you fight a fire? Starve it of oxygen. The stoic silence maintained by the PPP in the face of an onslaught from the liberals and the right appears to be part of a plan.
What plan, the liberals are screaming. They`re killing us, slaughtering those who speak out for justice, threatening and intimidating and bullying their way to a deformed, malign Pakistan. If we don`t fight back now, there`ll be nothing left to save.
They may have a point, but the visceral response isn`t necessarily a strategic, or even sensible, one.
The right — the fundos, the mullahs, the crazies, the ultra-right, call them what you will — is on the march. Dealt another punishing blow at the polls in 2008, they are like a junkie in search of the high of 2002.
(Back then, a surge in anti-American sentiment and a dictator looking to shut out the PML-N and the PPP allowed the MMA to sweep to unprecedented gains.)
Then, courtesy some bigots in a Nankana Sahib village, came the spark: a luckless Christian woman was convicted of blasphemy. Blasphemy. Christian. Woman. Instantly, she became a cause celebre for the progressives at home and the West. Instantly, the right had its agenda.
Cue your noisy, and noisome, rallies and protests, your sound and fury. Over our dead bodies! Pakistan is for Islam! We will never let this happen!
It may sound brutal — and with heartfelt apologies to Aasia Bibi — but a nobody from a nowhere village being accused by other nobodies of doing something ghastly isn`t exactly a recipe for building momentum. After the necessary hand-wringing from the progressives and perfunctory, formulaic denunciations from the right, the matter would have slipped off the national radar.
The right needed something more. Enter the brash governor of Punjab.
In politics, as in life, the unexpected happens sometimes. Salman Taseer`s defence of Aasia was not only outspoken, but, given the platform he had, it was phenomenally visible. The fire got the oxygen it needed. Last week it engulfed Taseer.
And since then, there has been nothing but stony silence from the PPP. (Bilawal Bhutto may make the occasional jiyala`s heart flutter, but the young prince`s words carry no weight, at least for now.)
The silence has been so total, so complete, so consistent that you know it is party policy. Say nothing, do nothing, starve the fire of oxygen and live to fight another day.
It makes sense as a tactic, at least for anyone who is familiar with the cacophonous, occasionally brutal bazaar of politics here and who knows a thing or two about history.
The right, historically organised but electorally marginalised, has always tried to vault to greater relevance by hawking the spectre of a godless, secular, westernised left trying to take the country away from its traditional — Muslim and Islamic — roots.
Memories are often short in Pakistan, but there are also some wonderful, gentle souls who are true servants of history. Some of them will tell you about 1970, long before the PNA rabble besieged Zulfi Bhutto.
The left was in the ascendant back then, and old Lahore became a battleground between the religious conservatives and the lefties. Forty years later, there is some hesitation to spell out the details, but it involved some paraphernalia being burned, the usual spurious allegations and a quasi mob or two.
The meta-narrative, though, was terribly familiar: build up the bugbear of the left (today, the `liberals`), then lead its takedown from the right, leaving the right mobilised, energised and popularised.
Fast forward from those halcyon days to 2011, and the PPP silence can be seen in that context.
Nothing would suit the right-wing parties more than another salvo fired from the other side. Fists pumping, bellies jiggling, beards askance, they would bay at the `enemies of Islam`.
Starve the fire of oxygen, though, and it will soon go out.
Add to this the PPP`s fear of establishment-led plots, and, from the present leadership`s perspective, it may make even more sense to avoid antagonising and riling up the right, from where the establishment has often attacked.
So, in the cut-throat world of Pakistani politics, the PPP response may make tactical sense. But does it serve any greater purpose? Does it, in security-state parlance, make strategic sense?
Assuming the PPP has some genuine interest in seeing a Pakistan different from the one the right wants to perpetuate, what comes after the silence, after the latest furore dies down, when there is time and space to think about ways of pushing back?
Looking at the present lot, you can`t help but feel the answer is: nothing.
They`ve got no ideas, they`ve got no plans, they`ve got no vision. Not about the blasphemy law, not about militancy, not the infrastructure of jihad, not even about the culture of intolerance generally. They`ve got nothing.
Which necessarily leaves you wondering: is the PPP`s absolute silence in the face of right-wing fury simply a function of wanting to hang on to power? Power for power`s sake?
And here we end up at the original, bigger problem. Messy, ugly and intractable as the dilemmas confronting Pakistan are, the threats are less worrying than the lack of commitment and will to fight them.
There is no brain trust, there are no thinkers, there is no thinking.
Knowing you want to go somewhere is only half of the problem; figuring out how to get there is the other half.
But if you don`t know where you want to go nor how to get there, don`t be surprised if the right wing hijacks you and takes you places you never knew existed.
The writer is a member of staff.
cyril.a@gmail.com
HUM HINDUSTANI: Crusaders against India’s Christians —J Sri Raman - Friday, January 14, 2011
True, India has no blasphemy laws. But does it have no Aasia Bibis? No Indian court has sent a man or woman of Aasia’s religion to death for the crime she is alleged to have committed. Does the country, however, not have kangaroo courts of a kind that order and carry out punishments on people for the offence of being or having become Christians? The answers are affirmative in both cases. The parivar, India’s far-right ‘family’, of course, focuses its hate campaign against the country’s largest minority. Muslim-baiting has always remained its main occupation and preoccupation. It is not so well known to the wider world that Christian-bashing comes a close enough second in its list of devoutly performed duties.
This should be no surprise to anyone with even a sketchy idea of the ideology of the parivar, especially its patriarch, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This ideology was spelt out in unmistakable terms by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, better known to his flock as Guru Golwalkar, who headed the RSS from 1940 to 1973 (thus constituting a bridge between the parivar generations before and after independence). A Bunch of Thoughts, a post-independence collection of the Guru’s sayings and speeches, was prescribed reading for the parivar for long years.
The book ends with a chapter titled ‘Internal threats’. The three threats listed and treated at some length are: Muslims, Christians and Communists. The present-day parivar leaders may pretend now and then to have given up some of the Guru’s extreme ideas. But the hit list has continued to guide the operations of the so-called Hindutva brigades.
The operations have included a holy war against a minuscule Christian minority, totalling 2.4 percent of the country’s population. Gujarat under Narendra Modi holds the dubious record of having witnessed the goriest and most horrendous anti-Muslim violence in 2002. It is not so well-known that an attack on tribal Christians in the Dangs area of Modi’s territory preceded and paved the way for the more infamous pogrom.
Violence erupted in the southern Gujarat district on Christmas Day, 1998. Churches and missionary institutions were attacked and many of them burnt down. Later, investigations left no doubt that the attacks by the parivar armies on several villages around the same time had been meticulously planned.
The Christmas campaign followed a year-long propaganda offensive through parivar leaflets portraying the missionaries, in true far-right style, as traitors. The leaflets urged the Christian tribesman to “purify yourself through yagna (ritual sacrifice) and become a Hindu”. They were warned of dire consequences if they did not heed the counsel of Hindutva.
All this was accompanied by a campaign against education imparted by Christian missionaries. One leaflet, baring a familiar stamp of the far-right, said, “Friends, we Hindus keep awake day and night and earn our living through hard work but do we ever think about the education of our children? With the intention of giving them the best education, you get them admitted in schools such as St Xavier’s and St Anne’s and consider it prestigious. In fact, this is the biggest mistake of your life.”
The leaflet added, “On account of... the Christian education influenced by the Christian tradition, when your child becomes a youth, he or she is already a half Christian.” This was a lie that millions of non-Christians educated in these institutions could nail easily. The campaign, however, continued.
A parivar propagandist, Nagendra Rao, sounded like former US President George Bush when he said, “If Muslims and Christians use perfidy and force in conversion, as they frequently do, we have to meet it with merciless ferocity and militant determination....Collateral damage in such cases is regrettable (but cannot be helped).”
The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee reacted predictably to the black Christmas in Dangs. Initially, in New Delhi, he called the incidents “shameful”. On proceeding to Gujarat, however, his tone underwent a total transformation. He declared, “There is need for a national debate on conversions.” The parivar militants took this as a go-ahead for furthering this particular far-right campaign, and not only in Gujarat. Orissa on India’s eastern coast became their next target.
Orissa claimed world attention with the assassination of Australian missionary Graham Staines. Binayak Sen was not the first medical missionary to incur the parivar’s wrath. Baptist preacher Staines, ministering to leprosy patients since 1965, was killed along with his sons Philip (10) and Timothy (6), burnt alive in a jeep while sleeping in it in January 1999. The parivar had hounded him for “harvesting souls”, though his efforts led to no dramatic rise in the district’s Christian population.
It was yet another cruel Christmas, when minority-baiting mobs struck again. Mobs attacked churches and burnt down houses and other property. The affected villages had no protection from the police or any paramilitary force against the 4,000-strong far-right army.
There was yet another round of anti-Christian violence in August 2008. This followed the killing of a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a vanguard of the violent campaigns in both Gujarat and Orissa. The minority community faced retaliatory attacks of brutal ferocity despite the fact that a Maoist group, active in the area, had owned responsibility for the killing. Over 3,000 Christian tribesmen fled for their lives and ended up as refugees in relief camps. Many stayed on in these camps without the minimum of facilities. The parivar mobs made sure that the refugees could not return to their homes unless they were ready to publicly renounce their faith and perform appropriate prayashchit (atonement).
The political front of the parivar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), played its part as well. The party was then a junior partner in the government of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and used its crucial support for the government’s survival to fuel the violence.
This unremitting orgy of violence in the unfortunate Kandhamal region of Orissa has actually continued to be justified by the parivar. Right in 2008, the Orissa BJP took the stand that “the Kandhamal riot occurred because NGOs (a euphemism for Christian organisations) have instigated and conspired to bring about conversion with the foreign funds. It was necessary to implement hard the laws pertaining the ban on conversion.”
The party and the parivar have stuck to the stand, even while several human rights organisations have reported the state of terror in which the minority population continues to live here. Even in October 2009, then BJP President Rajnath Singh said that there “is a need to check large scale religious conversions carried out by foreign forces”, because “foreign missionaries are using religion to infiltrate India and corrupt its culture”. Ultimately, “illegal mass conversions” are a “threat to national security”.
The fanatics in Pakistan, in other words, share a common target and hate object with the far-right in India. No wonder, over 70 Indian Muslim organisations and a large number of Muslim intellectuals have condemned Salmaan Taseer’s killing. The intellectuals have also denounced the “reprehensible law” on blasphemy, sought to be enforced in so brutal a manner.
They were speaking as one minority for another. What the cause of democracy demands in India and South Asia is an assertion of the solidarity of the peace-loving majority with persecuted minorities of religions and all other kinds.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint
Self-appointed messiahs - Tariq Fatemi - January 13, 2011
THERE is no denying that the current government has been a deep disappointment, even to its devoted supporters, not merely because of its inefficiency but more for its failure to show any interest in governance.
Resultantly, not only is the economy on the point of collapse and national institutions crumbling, but the very fabric of the state appears to be tearing apart. As if this was not enough, the self-appointed guardians of our morals and beliefs have now taken it upon themselves to cleanse society of those that do not conform to their warped concepts.
The suffering of the masses is so extensive that it is prompting many to question the very wisdom and viability of democratic institutions. Even more frightening is that this sense of despair could once again encourage `adventurers` and self-appointed messiahs to fish in troubled waters, as was evident from Gen (retd) Musharraf`s article published recently in this newspaper.
As an effort to refurbish his credentials, his argument failed dismally. He comes across as still living in the past, convinced of his infallibility and confident of his indispensability. The fact that he had to flee the country on account of country-wide protests appears not to have registered.
Mr Musharraf refuses to accept that his decade-long authoritarian rule primarily accounts for the many ills currently afflicting this country. Not one major project can be credited to him, nor one worthwhile policy that he could bequeath to his successors.
Though he was the fourth in the line of generals who violated their oaths as soldiers, he has the distinction of having done this more than once. Having overthrown an elected government, sent parliament packing and causing some political leaders to go into exile, he created an edifice based on duplicity. When it began to collapse, he once again violated the constitution and its laws, muzzling the media, locking up members of civil society and attempting to sack the chief justice.
In his article, Mr Musharraf claims that “democracy is an obsession with the West”. He ignores reality in not recognising that it is an “obsession” with humans the world over, irrespective of their colour or creed. What else would explain the unceasing struggle, at enormous cost, in the hamlets of Africa and the fair fields of South America?
Closer to home, is it not “obsession” with democracy that has sustained the heroic struggle of the Burmese people, led by a seemingly fragile widow, Aung San Suu Kyi? Indeed, the very birth of Pakistan was the result of a democratic choice by the Muslims of the subcontinent.
The general seeks justification for what he referred to as “tailoring democracy” by bringing up the “existential threat” that he felt Pakistan faces from India and the “centrifugal forces” acting against national security from within. Yet as regards to standing up to the Indian threat, the track record of authoritarian regimes is abysmal. The first military ruler, who had the brilliance to gift to Pakistan a democracy “suited to the genius of the people”, initiated a war that sowed the seeds of separatism in the eastern wing. The second ignominiously lost half the country, while the third was unaware of the loss of strategic Siachen, so consumed was he by his passion to make us all good Muslims.
Mr Musharraf, meanwhile, launched the unauthorised adventure in Kargil which not only cost the lives of thousands of soldiers but left Pakistan ostracised by the international community. Meanwhile, with just one phone call, he succumbed to a foreign power`s onerous demands, oblivious to the country`s long-term interests. Most disastrous of all was his continued mollycoddling of extremists and militants.
Though it may have been the American preacher, Theodore Parker, who defined democracy as “a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people”, (later made famous by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address in 1863), the idea of an elected and accountable government is almost as old as mankind itself. Whereas in the animal kingdom, leadership is determined by raw power, humans seek some say in determining who should govern them. It may also be true that democracy can be slow, inefficient, and occasionally even corrupt, but as Winston Churchill remarked that it may be “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
The general claims that the state`s security needs should be given precedence over democracy. In fact, there is no contradiction between the two. They are mutually reinforcing, for a state is far stronger when its rulers enjoy a popular mandate.
Mr Musharraf would have been well-served had he recalled that the most dangerous moment in the life of the young American Republic came in March 1783, when the officers of the Revolutionary Army, profoundly unhappy with their elected representatives, gathered to discuss seizing power.
It was the country`s good fortune that its then Commander-in Chief, Gen Washington, used all his powers of pressure and persuasion to dissuade the angry officers, urging them to “give one more distinguished proof of unexampled patriotism and patient virtue, rising superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings”. n
A multi-ethnic and multi- linguistic state such as Pakistan cannot afford even a unitary system of government, far less an authoritarian regime. In fact, experiments with systems in which power and privilege are maintained by an individual or a class in perpetuity would be utterly disastrous. At such a time as this, when extremism and militancy are striking at the very roots of this country, it is only a democratic polity, responsive to the people and sensitive to their interests, that can create domestic consensus and tolerance. And these are essential to prevent this land from what appears to be its head-long plunge into anarchy.
VIEW: Moral medievalism and the state —Ammar Rashid - Thursday, January 13, 2011
Many in the aftermath of the January 4 tragedy have struggled to understand the mindset of a section of supporters of Salmaan Taseer’s murderer, Mumtaz Qadri. The reaction of the religious right was, of course, all too easy to explain away for many; those who make religion an instrument of political gain will necessarily use this event to stoke religious fervour and gain the political space/popularity they so desire. But what of the reaction of our educated middle class? What of the reaction of those students, lawyers, engineers, doctors, and the rest of the internet/armchair mujahideen who have shocked many observers by condoning and celebrating this tragedy? Those whose interests, mannerisms and habits reek of globalised modernity, in all its capitalist glory, yet whose opinions seem more reflective of some despotic medieval rage? Those who consume ‘decadent’ American and Indian popular culture (the provocateur extraordinaire Lady Gaga and besmirched ‘munni’ often coming up as favourites), imbibe ‘immoral’ intoxicants, pursue ‘illicit’ sexual dalliances and concomitantly celebrate the ‘aashiq-e-rasool’, Mumtaz Qadri, without skipping a beat?
At one level, it is easy to dismiss these middle class cadres as hypocrites of the worst grade imaginable, and one would not be amiss in stating so. But, in terms of explanatory depth, this denunciation is of little value. Mass hypocrisy is often an expression of deep-rooted societal contradictions rather than being an intrinsic or absolute condition. Situating these contradictions in their structural and historical context is vital to finding the way out of this unending morass.
Many attempts have been made to explain this phenomenon by hearkening to the terrible era of Zia and the imbibing by the educated populace of the Islamist currents he unleashed in society as instruments of state policy. While definitely a factor, this remains an incomplete hypothesis that, if one may say so, overstates the influence of one particularly gruesome dictator in this country’s chequered history.
I believe that this middle class ‘morality of xenophobia’ results from a confluence of the historical memory and logic of the Pakistani state with modern, information-age capitalism. As denizens of the information age, the educated middle classes in Pakistan have been, to varying degrees, exposed to much of what may be called global popular culture in all its post-modern glory. The multiplicity of narratives on offer in this age of borderless information and entertainment has, like the rest of the world, exacerbated the erosion of traditional (in our case Islamic) conceptions of ‘individual’ morality for the middle class, which has already been set in place by the growth of urban capitalism. For them, there is now an ever-increasing access and exposure to alternative modes of rationalisation for individual behavioural choices due to the nature and proliferation of global media.
However, the internalisation of these alternative models of individual behaviour by our middle class is accompanied by a countervailing trend — the continued ideational retention of Islamic conceptions of individual morality that remain embedded in the middle class psyche because of social surroundings, education and upbringing. This ideational retention is further reinforced by the siege mentality engendered by unending informational access to the global and regional military developments of the past decade. This ideological contradiction breeds an unconsciously perceived ‘moral deficit’ within this class, which then demands fulfilment. However, as choice regarding individual moral activity remains constrained by the material realities and socio-economic compulsions of the middle class (i.e. keeping up with the Maliks and the need to stay ‘modern’), the contradiction is then sought to be resolved through another domain — the domain of public or collective morality. Which brings us to the state narrative in Pakistan.
Public morality can exist in many forms, expressions and narratives. In Pakistan, however, the very nature of the state necessitates and perpetuates a particularly exclusivist conception of public morality rooted in its history. The origin of Pakistani statehood was not based on the acceptance of a plurality of opinions and identities. It was not based on the acceptance of the existence of multiple narratives of marginalisation. It was not an origin cognisant of the possibilities of its existence, creating and perpetuating further forms of exploitation and oppression. One speech in the English language to a constituent assembly of landlords and opportunists, it must be said, does not make a movement emancipatory.
The origin of Pakistani statehood was based rather on the convoluted, albeit eloquent, articulation of the supremacy of the moral position of a particular religious identity over others. It is that logic, which has guided the statecraft of its unrepresentative office bearers, the uniformed guardians of the citadel of Islam, for over 60 years, with its results now laid bare in their entirety. It is that logic that has prevented any alternative, more inclusive narrative of public morality to take root in society’s ideational spheres.
It is this very logic of Pakistani statehood that the educated middle class, reeling from the contradictions of its perceived individual moral deficits, is now regurgitating in its support for the murderer Qadri. The supposedly benign nationalist narrative of this state’s origins has transmogrified in the information age into the rabidly exclusionary and xenophobic public morality that the educated middle classes, with their imbibed historical memory, now espouse with zeal.
There is perhaps no better historical exemplification of this contemporary dilemma of our educated classes than Jinnah himself — Jinnah, the paragon of modernity and liberal mannerisms, and concurrently the purveyor of an exclusionary, religiously inspired collectivist narrative. Jinnah, the possessor of contradictions so profound, they remain unresolved six decades after his death.
Situating the current crisis in this oft-ignored historical and structural context is vital for those who want to attempt to rescue Pakistani society from this daunting precipice. Struggling against the religious right from a position of abject weakness within the debilitating discursive parameters set by the Pakistani state is an exercise in futility. This strategy is sadly incognisant of the fact that the perpetuation of the state’s public narrative necessitates the continuation of tacit, if not outright, support for the reactionary currents that now seek to completely monopolise the public sphere.
Any struggle that aims to succeed must create an altogether new collectivist narrative of inclusion that counters the religious, ethnic and class-based exclusion that has defined the Pakistani statehood from the outset of this county’s existence. There is a need to realise that reminiscence about Jinnah’s Pakistan as a rallying cry is a complete misnomer — we are, unfortunately, smack dab in the middle of that Pakistan.
The writer is a development professional and an alumnus of LUMS working in Islamabad. He can be reached at ammar.rashid@gmail.com