The pity is that nothing will happen

Islamabad diary
The fear is not that all this talk of revolution and marches will disrupt the democratic process. The fear is that it will do nothing of the kind, that nothing will happen and that things as they are – what we call the status quo – will continue as before in all their glory. And we will keep moaning and lamenting our condition.
Military dictatorship has been one facet of the Pakistani status quo. Civilian democracy is another. They both amount to the same thing, both protecting an unjust socio-economic order. If military governments spend little on education and health do democratic governments spend more? What fundamentally distinguishes one from the other?
I like freedom of expression. I earn my bread and butter from it. So I celebrate its existence. But how does this noble principle help the rehri-wallah, the thele-wallah, the mazdoor, the kissan? Does it get them bread? Does it reduce the gap between them and their masters?
Has freedom of expression and democracy stopped the policeman from taking bribes or using torture as an instrument of repression and investigation? Has democracy meant that patwaris and other officials of the revenue department no longer line their pockets? With Gen Musharraf’s poisoned gift of free media channels have we become more enlightened or cultured as a nation? Has our aesthetic sense become more highly developed?
I grew up in a household in which it was an article of faith that if elections were held in Pakistan everything, eventually, would turn out right. This was before 1970, before Pakistan’s first general elections. Elections were held and one thing leading to another the country was torn asunder. The next general elections came seven years later and instead of securing a golden age paved the way for the establishment of Gen Ziaul Haq’s reactionary rule. Today’s Pakistan with its hypocrisy and bigotry is more a tribute to Zia than to anything associated with Jinnah.
When Zia’s rule ended and democracy staged a comeback did we begin building a new society or did our condition worsen? Where we had military repression before, we had a full dose of democratic corruption thereafter. What consolation is it to the homeless if a palatial house is built by a general or a capitalist, or the kick he receives is from a military boot or some other fashion in footwear?
Our politics used to be corrupt but money was never as big a factor in it as it is today. You have to see at first hand, from close quarters, the wealth of our leading political players to gain an insight into what the post-Zia democracy has meant for Pakistan. The military in power is an oligarchy. Democracy in the ascendant is also an oligarchy. So will some sage please descend from the mountains to elucidate the difference between the one state of affairs and the other?
The final justification for any system of government is cheap bread and social justice. Godless communism in Russia and Cuba – to name only these two countries – delivered political repression and cheap bread, free education and free medicine. Christian democracy in western Europe has delivered something better, political freedom and a measure of social justice. East Asian authoritarianism (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) delivered economic development. Our brand of military rule led to no economic development. Our brand of democracy has given us neither progress nor social justice.
We’ve had the worst of both worlds and we only delude ourselves by thinking that repeating the same experiments, with the same jokers, will lead to different results. A Zardari can only be a Zardari. The Sharifs cannot think beyond Mughal projects and their own pockets. Shuffle these cards as much as you like, the results still will be the same.
Our mainstream parties are instruments of patronage. Radical reform, which is what this country needs if it is to go forward, lies outside their field of vision. They can come to power not three times but thirteen times and they will remain instruments of patronage…and self-aggrandisement.
In our time only three political organisations have produced trained workers and cadres: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT). The mainstream parties have specialised in producing rabbles…who can’t partake of a meal without breaking the dishes.
The JI is too austere, too much of a dry stick, for most ordinary souls. Its brand of Islam lacking popular appeal, it is a prisoner of its limitations and will remain this way for the next hundred years. Islam through the danda – danda-bardar Islam – is the Jamaat’s lasting contribution to the story of Pakistan.
Altaf Hussain’s signal contribution to national politics is the moulding of the Mohajir community into a formidable political force. But the strength of his party – its ethnic appeal – is also it major weakness. Try as it might it cannot transcend its ethnic boundaries. There is also the matter of its image, tainted by accusations of violence and large-scale extortion. (On balance, however, the better part of the MQM’s legacy is likely to remain. The better-off Mohajir became a part of the ruling establishment. The Mohajir under-class was without direction and leadership. Altaf Hussain supplied that deficit.)
This leaves the PAT. A freethinking person, such as in my more hopeful moments I take myself to be, can’t be very comfortable with any organisation whose political idiom is so heavily laced with preaching and religion, even if one would have to admit that the best Islamic evangelist we have in Pakistan today, or for that matter across the globe, is Allama Tahirul Qadri. Still, preaching is preaching and too much of it is not good for the stomach. But the PAT worker, male and female, I find most impressive – dedicated, committed and given to a reasonable way of putting his/her ideas across rather than blind or dry dogmatism. If there was more of this kind across the political spectrum our politics would be the better for it.
But our status quo is too deeply entrenched and we as a people too deeply conservative in our social attitudes to respond readily, with fire in our hearts, to a call to the barricades. So while I feel that the Allama’s prescription about what needs to be done – beginning with ruthless accountability – is on the mark, little will come, I fear, of all his high-flown talk of revolution. I wish of course for creative disorder to be on the march, to sweep away the old, to do away with all the nonsense and idiocy that clog the Pakistani mind, and bring in something new. But I know nothing of the sort is likely to happen.
Even so, what’s the harm in trying? Pakistani democracy, the current brand, can give us nothing new. It can only serve us the same stale porridge. Don’t we remember how the punditocracy celebrated the successful transition of democracy, as if Pakistan had crossed a milestone? This was hardly a year ago and already it seems a year too long, as the realisation sinks in that to touch the lives of the mass of the people there must be more to democracy than the usual catchwords.
But we have become such slaves in our minds that we stand robbed of the power of thought. We may be fed up with the present but we dare not think of alternatives. Anyone questions the status quo and the commentariat shouts that democracy is in danger. With our gift for poetry what phrases we have invented – jamhooriat ka husn. Haven’t we had enough of this ‘husn’ and must we not look for something more – if we are finally to make something of God’s chosen Republic?
Email: winlust@yahoo.com