Looking for suspects

The bunch of Pakistanis who went on an unprecedented rampage in the posh and hitherto protected Lahore Cantonment have left us ceaselessly intrigued. Who were these guys – and ladies – who had chosen to direct their ire at targets that had traditionally escaped the fancy of protesters in the country?

The so-called puppets present in the shape of the provincial administration with the careless caretaker at its head were spared the inconvenience of being bombarded with the choicest slogans that are saved for days such as these. Such directness of purpose had earlier been on show in cities such as Peshawar. For the more backward, those who went inside the sacred Lahore destination and grabbed the lucky peacock wings with a vow of doing more, this was revolution.

The choices of venue led to some quick identification of members of the mob. The thought that readily came to mind appeared to be vouching for the fact that this procession unlike the previous ones was not afraid of expressing outrage against what we are used to addressing with all our temerity. This assertion or supposition then led to a strain of thinking fed by the theory that these people, who comprise the PTI brigade, are not scared of the powers that be since they belong to and have risen in proximity to the same source of authority.

It is strongly rumoured that Imran Khan enjoys great support ‘among the families’ of those who form the nucleus of our conventional establishment just as it is alleged that he is most popular with the kin of famous personalities holding key positions in other vital institutions in the country. This proximity could well have been one reason for the boldness witnessed during the attack on the corps commander’s house in Lahore as efforts were undertaken to come up with first-impression profiles of the participants in the protest rally that turned rogue.

Who else could be there? Surely many of those who have had this rage building inside them because of the most trying times that Pakistanis have been faced with. There are plenty of reasons for these desperate souls to come out and aim their stones at whatever monuments to old authority they come across. They are the most damning raw material available to the PTI leadership so fleetingly on view during the disturbances following something so unusual as the arrest of a politician on May 9. These desperate ripened Pakistanis are fed up with not just one or two but all symbols of old Pakistani authority and ready for one ‘final’ attempt at change before they are discarded into the dustbin of history.

This does not of course mean an endorsement for the view according to which this was one leaderless organic awami wave in Lahore that disrupted our traditional ideas about who we should be showing our anger to. There had to be some kind of strategy and guidelines available to the crowd of protesters. It is however unclear whether some kind of plan or direction was available in anticipation of Imran Khan’s arrest.

As we go about making the list of suspects who took their case to the real rulers, the real protectors of life on the land, those who had previously traversed the road to the cantonment in Peshawar make their appearance early in the piece. One more time, the more innocent members of our generally detached Lahori club have spoken their truth – which says that those who led the violent raids on the city roads that day were destructive aliens of a certain ethnic makeup who had descended on the peaceful plains just as the hordes of their elders had invaded these areas for ages.

The kind of false security about the future this refrain seeks to create would have served as our badly-needed opium at this hour of need but for the footage of the angry people taking part in the May 9 demos aired on social media. They look pretty much like your average people in the city where we have grown up in.

Some of us would surely find it tough to reconcile to the new options of protest venues discovered by frustrated frantic Pakistanis after growing out of the conventional influences. Not least conspicuous in that category are the politicians, the PTI stalwarts, who managed to crucially mark their absence from the scene of violence in this very serious case. The most old fashioned among them tried (vainly) to drum up old logic and harness the torrents back towards the original course. Good old Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi showed so much character and spent so much energy clinging on to the formula position where he described the arrest of Imran Khan as an act meant to please someone important by the name of Nawaz Sharif. But in the episode, which for once sought to take the fight over and beyond the apparent powers, was anyone listening?

The writer is a senior journalist.