More power to the Lahore High Court

Islamabad diary
If ever there was a madcap scheme, an exercise in unvarnished insanity, it was the idea of an overhead expressway connecting Gulberg with the motorway at Saggian. Lahore which has withstood the ravages of time and the march of endless conquerors is now under determined attack from a more insidious source: the gods of development, at their most insidious in this harebrained idea.
If it had only been up to Lahore’s spineless and unthinking population this scheme would have gone ahead, leaving an ugly, incurable scar on the city. Mercifully, the Lahore High Court has stepped in to put an end to this nonsense, a full bench comprising their lordships Mansoor Ali Shah, Aminuddin Khan and Shams Mahmood Mirza holding that there were no sound reasons for the rushed acquisition of land for the expressway, under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.
Strange how we go about proving our anti-colonialism, our faces all aglow with patriotism as we change place-names at will, often with silly replacements, but no government willing to let go of this prime relic of colonialism, the Land Acquisition Act. Because when it comes to grabbing private land for unconscionable and often stupid purposes, nothing so fits the bill as this truly draconian law.
The higher judiciary, one has to admit, has not always served the interests of justice and fair play. There is no shortage of instances in our judicial history where judges, and powerful ones at that, have sided with authority at the expense of equity and justice. I hate to say this but there would have been judges prepared to take the government’s side in this matter as well. But to its credit this bench did not take that easy path.
Indeed, their lordships went on to observe that the government should pay more attention to health and education, timely words but likely to have as much effect as water off a duck’s back as far as the Punjab government is concerned.
To recapitulate the list of our follies, our first sins were committed in the name of patriotism, or the other name we gave to patriotism, the ideology of Pakistan, through higher patriotism managing to alienate East Pakistan. Other sins were committed in the name of Kashmir. That’s how we went into our unwinnable wars, especially that mother of all fiascos, the 1965 war. Later, more horrendous sins were committed in the name of ‘jihad’. Daish or the Islamic State is a late arrival on the scene. We were the first ‘jihadis’, the path-breakers, showing the way to all others.
But as if to prove that our passion for self-punishment remains unfulfilled the latest edition of our sins comes in the name of ‘development’. The ruination of Islamabad is a monument to development. Efficient public transport, at minimal cost, was considered a fool’s errand…and likely to bring in no political dividends. So the most expensive, and aesthetically the most disastrous, option was explored, which is how Lahore got its metro-bus, an ugly and expensive line across the city. An uglier version of that calamity is now being visited on Islamabad.
It can be argued that Islamabad deserves it. This is a city which can’t pay its own way, produces nothing, and is therefore a drain on the public purse, giving the country nothing in return except mediocre if not disastrous government. Every ruler has had a hand in the city’s despoliation. But the Sharifs take the prize, Islamabad’s destruction at their hands far greater than anything that Pervez Musharraf or Kamran Lashari could have imagined.
And there is no one to stop them. One of Pakistan’s biggest fictions is the notion of a civil society. There is a vast, paid NGO crowd here which periodically mounts miniscule demonstrations – seldom more than 20 or 30 strong – to burnish its credentials, that too in safe confines such as the Kohsaar Market. Against the metro-bus scheme the whole of Islamabad should have marched, or at least its PTI-voting middle and upper crust. But there was not even a whimper of protest.
One exception to Islamabad’s supine record was the agitation against Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid, who was put on the defensive by demonstrators led by the social activist, Jibran Nasir. But that’s it, so far at least. Maulvis and madressah students can put together some display of street power. But the burger, mummy-daddy crowd remains largely listless and uninvolved.
True, we saw these classes stirred for the first time during Imran Khan’s dharna and agitation. But when, in the wake of the Peshawar school attack, he stepped down from his container, that spirit and enthusiasm also seemed to have fled somewhere.
The same we see in Lahore – no worthwhile civil society movement at all. Just as Islamabad should have stood up against the metro-bus, educated and affluent Lahore should have stood up against the elevated expressway. The PTI could mobilise this crowd but the PTI oscillates between hyper-excitement and confusion. Imran Khan mentally is still stuck in NA-122, and now stuck in the Senate elections, and the Lahore PTI seems to have no life or volition of its own. Come to think of it, the PTI’s top gun in Lahore is a property tycoon – property tycoonism Pakistan’s leading industry nowadays – and to expect him to get worked up over civic issues is off the mark.
The Jamaat-e-Islami has street power, or at least it has a powerful student base. But the Jamaat has always been into other things, morality (as defined by the Jamaat), the fires of hell and eternal damnation. Saving Lahore or being concerned about environmental and aesthetic issues is therefore not high on its agenda. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has a very strong (and fearsome looking) party cadre at his disposal. But his Jamaat-ud-Daawah is into broader issues like the liberation of Kashmir. Urban destruction doesn’t count as an issue on his radar.
The dedicated worker base of Allama Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek lies exhausted and somewhat shattered after last year’s prolonged sit-in and agitation. It is clear now that the Allama gravely miscalculated the whole venture. Far from being able to take a stand on any civic issue, his organisation is finding it hard to keep up the pressure on the Model Town inquiry (regarding the 14 killed and the scores injured as a result of police firing).
There are so many things happening in Lahore, vast sums of money being spent on dubious schemes, with no public debate and no transparency. Public hospitals and schools lack funds but for so-called mega-schemes there is enough money, often squeezed from other heads, like part of the health budget two years ago diverted into the metro-bus scheme. Whoever heard of a road with commercial markets on the side being driven through a university campus? But this has happened with the Punjab University, with no questions being asked.
No one is talking about these issues because civil society is dead, other organisations have their own agendas and the PTI, a bit befuddled and not sure of itself, is on an extended winter vacation, Imran Khan only seeming to come alive when it comes to the rigging charges in his Lahore constituency, NA-122.
So we have to be grateful for small mercies. The judiciary at its weakest is a cause of public despair. But at its best, as in this judgement of the LHC, it can provide heart-warming reasons to celebrate.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com