The blinkered and the ‘im-witted’

The supporters of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) are single-minded and focused. The blinkers of their resolution come from their belief in the spiritual superiority of Dr Tahirul Qadri.
Their leader, who even claims to have been under the tutelage of the pious scholars and saints of the past in the world of his dreams, the alam-e-roya, besides receiving direct guidance from the seers of God, has a definite cult following in the shape of his disciples.
It is purely a personality cult. Where the leader can lie through his teeth and get away with it. Therefore, no rational conversation is possible with his followers. Their whole thinking is in binaries. Whatever Qadri says is correct. He can never be wrong. Whatever his critics say is wrong. Those who believe in him are right, those who don’t are wrong. Period.
For a moment, set aside the question whether the power and influence he enjoys on a segment of population is used by any internal or external security and intelligence apparatus. Let us ask ourselves how he and his movement came about. How did other such movements, parties or groups come about and openly function in the name of religion? Qadri found himself more social legitimacy and political space than others because he has not equipped his followers with firearms. No doubt they are trained and have defensive-cum-offensive gear like large moving cranes, fortified trucks, metal cutters, axes and hammers, etc but they do not carry guns like other militant religious groups.
The other thing that has expanded Qadri’s space and increased his agency is the positions he has taken against terrorism in Muslim countries and suicide attacks by other brands of Islamist terrorists. He is also more inclusive for people of minority faiths in Muslim-majority regions. But he has fully used this space and the rhetoric that brought him this space to further his personal agenda of acquiring political power in his native country Pakistan even after acquiring Canadian citizenship.
Dr Tahirul Qadri and others religious leaders like him will keep appearing unless the state of Pakistan and its managers take responsibility of putting every child in a good public school and helping every young woman and man obtain some gainful employment.
The mushrooming of madressahs of different hues and colours continues unabated in Pakistan. There are many of these, with millions of children and young adults enrolled and associated with them. Most of the young people in these establishments come from the working class and in some cases the lower middle class.
At an ideological level, if the rhetoric of religion is continued to be used for furthering political gains by the elite, the elite-dominated state, its civil and military institutions and the mainstream political parties, this will continue to happen. The elite, perhaps out of penance, fund such outfits.
Qadri himself is a product of Nawaz and Shahbaz’s father Mian Sharif’s huge donations and favours to his system of education and training. (Ironic that Qadri is a product of their own making.) There are others from the business class across Pakistan who majorly evade government taxes on the one hand and generously fund religious outfits on the other.
Any faith, like ours, has scores and scores of sects, sub-sects and interpretations. If the political domain is defined by faith, each one of us as individuals and different groups as collectives have a right to push for our own brand, our own understanding and our own interpretation to dominate the political domain. At an administrative level, if there is no proper schooling and employment guaranteed for all by the state rather than leaving it to madressahs and seminaries motivated by religious faith or private chains of schools motivated by commercial interest, there will be millions of young people from underprivileged classes who will continue to join such movements. And why shouldn’t they?
Therefore, it is not just about banning the PAT because they attacked state-run institutions and government secretariats as is being discussed among some. It is about revisiting the policy of using religion to define politics and a quick review of the public education system including that of the provision of religious education.
There is a more belligerent TTP which is better equipped in terms of waging a violent struggle and then there is the PAT which is definitely not non-violent as has been witnessed on the streets of Islamabad but is certainly kept far less equipped with arms and armour. Banning a few such outfits means nothing if the policy of supporting similar outfits in the name of faith in order to use them for political and strategic purposes continues by the state and its security agencies. Someone else may go haywire if you make them angry and take to the streets in the same fashion. The more armed they are, the more bloodshed it will cause.
Let us now come to the ‘im-witted’ supporters of the PTI, barring some who do not fall in this category and saw hope in Khan as an agent of change and wished the PTI to become a truly reformist political party like some of the genuine supporters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or some conscientious middle class women and men elsewhere who were disappointed in all other political actors. But a large number of affluent middle class, schooled in English-medium institutions here or in serene campuses abroad, mostly young followers but also some serving and retired bureaucrats, military officers, bankers and businessmen, are as single-minded and focused as Qadri’s lot. They eagerly want Imran Khan to become the prime minister of Pakistan – come what may.
Khan has no spiritual following. His is an emotional one. And the more you engage with these people the more evident it becomes that it is also purely a personality cult. Here also, the leader can lie through his teeth and get away with it. If the elected president of his party, Javed Hashmi, wants him to become the prime minister, Hashmi is revered. If he says Khan is using extra-constitutional means to meet his objectives, Hashmi is despised by the followers of Khan.
Khan can manipulate facts, level allegations against anyone and call people names whenever he chooses to. There is no demand for any proof or evidence. Most of his examples come from a playing field with a 500-metre diameter with 15 men in the middle at one time. Otherwise he tells anecdotes similar to those that appear in the Reader’s Digest or back-of- the-book newsmaker columns of good and bad trivia in magazines.
Oxans, Cantabs, Aitchisonians, Kinnaird-‘ians’, Grammarians and Abdalians listen in awe. Any U-turns Khan takes are irrationally and vociferously defended by his followers. They also think in binaries. They simply cannot get the fact that rubbishing Khan’s expediency, lack of a sense of history, limited intellect and irresponsible tactics does not automatically amount to supporting the PML-N or any other party.
Ignoring the choice of language in his recent public speeches, Khan’s comportment makes him endearing for the affluent middle class and qualifies him to become the prime minister. But there is a problem here for the PTI. Qadri and his disciples want him to become the king-maker, the patron saint who guides, oversees and reprimands the chief executive of the country. The problem with Khan and his ‘im-witted’ supporters is that they want him to become the prime minister. That is a political office.
But they hate politics as it is filthy, they dislike politicians as they are corrupt and they detest trade unions as they are troublemakers. So what choice are they left with? A friend who falls in this category of Khan’s supporters told me once with an earnest look on her face, “You know, I wish Imran had become the prime minister under Musharraf. It would have been perfect.” If a similar choice, in whatever garb or no garb, comes along in the future, such supporters must convince Khan to take it.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.
Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com