‘Volatile’ seems quite an inadequate expression for the turn Pakistani politics has taken in last couple of weeks. The articulation of dissent through dharna or the long march has trivialised the role of parliament in any democratic dispensation.
Without apportioning blame on any one person or group, one may assert that in the current context parliament has yet again been made to look dysfunctional, particularly as a means to resolve conflict, and the level of belligerence in politics has raised a notch higher -- after Imran Khan called for civil disobedience. This, if it bears fruit, may debilitate the beleaguered state apparatus more than the Sharifs and their cronies.
According to Professor Hugo Adam Bedau, civil disobedience means "the problem of the individual’s relation to the state and its government, its authority and its laws".
While going into the etymology of the phrase, it is assumed that "civil" means "observing accepted social forms; polite", thus, civil disobedience denotes something akin to polite, orderly disobedience, which conflates with pacifism or an exclusively non-violent resistance.
It was this interpretation of the phrase that led anti-apartheid activists to break law and then beg the authorities to arrest them.
In a country like Pakistan, where disrespect for ‘law’ is commonplace, a call for civil disobedience is likely to usher in an era of absolute anarchy. Therefore, in the present situation, when the state institutions need to be brought on track after long drawn violence in Pakistan, such a disruptive form of dissent, as demonstrated by Imran Khan, is highly counterproductive -- not only for the state but also for his own politics.
Historian Judith Brown infers that the civil disobedience, launched by M.K. Gandhi, could neither get the desired results like purna swaraj nor could it influence the process of constitutional reform, even though it yielded a few positive results only vicariously.
In view of the chaos that has engulfed Islamabad as a result of the Imran Khan-Tahir ul Qadri marches and the call to civil disobedience by the former, it seems imperative to historicise civil disobedience as an instrument of agitational politics and the ramification it may have on a polity such as Pakistan.
In South Asia, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) acquainted us with the civil disobedience as a category of agitational politics. But through Leo Tolstoy and Ruskin, Gandhi imbibed influences from an American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who in fact coined the term in 1848. Being disgusted with slavery and the Mexican-American War in 1840s and 1850s, Thoreau propounded ‘civil disobedience’.
In 1840s, Thoreau refused to pay poll tax as a symbol of his objections to the US federal government and its aggressive conduct in war against Mexico, support for those opposed to slavery in the southern states, and continued violation of the rights of native Indian population. He was briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay the poll tax but he felt freer than the people outside.
Thoreau’s defiance had no discernible effect on these injustices. Nonetheless, his ideas were a good example of how practice can yield a reflective theoretical product.
Theorist David Daube in Civil Disobedience in Antiquity traced its origin not with Thoreau but in 399 BC, when Crito argued that Socrates should flee from the prison to avoid an undeserved death penalty. Jews and Christians put their lives in jeopardy when they disobeyed the ‘demands of Roman law and its claims of supreme authority’.
Religious consciousness, with its doctrine of ‘passive obedience’, has a long history of ‘conscientious refusal’ when faced with secular demands.
However, that theory broke free from the religious setting in 1849 with Thoreau’s essay, Resistance to Civil Government. However, it was through the writings of Tolstoy that Thoreau’s ideas were brought to international attention. Civil disobedience gained a much wider currency once Gandhi launched his satyagraha. It is still not very clear as to what exactly Gandhi achieved from that movement but it was because of him that civil disobedience (satyagraha) found a niche in the books of political theory.
Later on, Martin Luther King Jr. called for the Civil Rights Movement for black Americans to follow the same policy. Also, Bertrand Russell used civil disobedience in an adroit manner for ‘nuclear pacifism’. Renowned figures such as John F. Kennedy, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway and William Butler Yeats were influenced by civil disobedience.
Thoreau calls a government in any form an agent of corruption and injustice. He even spurned with derision the notion of democracy which, he thought, is more harmful than helpful. He exhorts people not to wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice, because voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice.
Mercifully, so far at least, Imran has not stated this while accusing the Sharifs of corruption.
Based on the history of civil disobedience, perhaps, any expectation of a volte face under Imran is no more than a distant dream. It is nothing but an exercise in futility.
The point is, though many people would have reposed their belief in the notion of civil disobedience that may turn things around in Pakistan (an idea which has the potential of creating upheaval), only a few would put it into actual practice. Those who have tried it practically have not achieved much.
For Pakistan and other states and societies, the best prognosis can only be ‘dialogue’ and ‘reform’ and not revolution (inquilab) or civil disobedience.