Saying it with bricks

What options does an ordinary man have in this country to find redress for the wrongs he suffers in his daily existence? For anyone who has observed the situation that exists on the ground, the answer is obvious. An ordinary man’s struggle for survival is a story of epic proportions, in a tragic sense.

Essentially, it is denial of justice and dignity at every step of the way. The remedy, perhaps, is comprehensive social change. That is what the revolutionaries want to achieve by overthrowing the existing state. But can the man on the street do it on his own? And that too with a brick in his hand?

If this is a bit confusing, let me put it straight. Newly inducted Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ali Amin Gandapur has exhorted the people to hit any officer who asks for a bribe with a brick, ostensibly drawing blood. These words of wisdom were uttered by the PTI leader in a fiery speech delivered on Wednesday in a village in D I Khan.

Gandapur asked the people not to come to him to complain about officials who demand bribes. Hit them with a brick. Simple. If the children of any of them protest, tell them that you have saved their father from going to hell.

There should be no doubt about the meaning of the message the chief minister had delivered. He was asking the people to take the law into their hands and indulge in vigilantism. But consider the irony that he himself embodies law enforcement in his province.

A clip of Gandapur’s hot-blooded remarks was shown on some channels and circulated on social media. I read a report on the site of BBC Urdu about questions that were raised by the netizens. How can the chief minister of a province advise people to resort to violence against any official?

If the PTI supporters want to rationalize this reckless transgression on the part of a leader chosen for the only post of authority that the party now has – as they have done in the case of their leaders’ and activists’ unlimited indiscretions – the excuse is that fighting corruption is the central plank of the party.

This does make a lot of sense. Corruption is the enemy we need to defeat. But this battle is not to be fought at the level of a common man’s isolated encounter with authority. The truth is that it is the official who holds both, the law and the brick, in his hands. It is essentially the powerlessness of the maltreated citizen that breeds the social injustice of Pakistani society.

Besides, any campaign against corruption should begin at the top – and that, rightly, is also the PTI’s stance. Incidentally, there have been charges of corruption in high places during the former provincial regimes of the party. Opposition will always do that. However, senior PTI leader Sher Afzal Marwat has admitted that corruption was rampant in his party’s previous government in KP.

Coming back to what I said at the outset, it is the common man’s plight that is generally not addressed in Pakistan. It is not possible, not in KP and not in any other province, for a wronged citizen to hit an official with a brick or even grab him by the collar. But the powerlessness of the dispossessed is still expressed in some manner and they do take law into their own hands.

I am referring to how the mob on the streets of Karachi has repeatedly lynched people suspected of being muggers and robbers. The frequency with which this happens is alarming. It has almost become a matter of routine, to the extent that the news of another such incident is just not considered important.

For example, a suspected robber was lynched by an angry mob in the Korangi neighbourhood of Karachi on Tuesday. One report that I read on the city page of a Karachi daily covered just over an inch of the column. “The suspect died on the spot”, it neatly concluded.

This is how we deal with human stories of potentially great magnitude. In addition, nothing happens as a follow-up. Do they talk about these societal aberrations when they sit on the high table of authority in the citadel of power? Is the state of the society, in the context of its disequilibrium, of any concern for them?

As an aside, street crime and crime in general tend to rise during Ramazan. More than usual, people are seen to be losing their cool. It appears that instances of road rage also increase. I wonder if Gandapur’s angry outburst can also be put in this category.

Finally, I want to refer to another incident of this week that I think is also a reflection of the state of our society, though it will be hard to fully explore its genesis and its implications. Let us not do that and just paraphrase the published report. And I want to keep it brief.

In Dera Ismail Khan, an additional sessions judge has handed a death sentence to two girl students of a seminary and life imprisonment to another for “slaughtering” their young teacher for allegedly committing blasphemy. According to a police report, the three students of a madrassah had murdered a young female teacher two years ago.

To quote from one published report: “In the initial statement given to the police, the arrested students said that one of their fellow students had told them about her dream that the teacher had committed blasphemy and her killer would be given the glad tidings of paradise”.

Knives and sticks were recovered from the three students. The report said that the tortured and slaughtered body of the teacher was found lying in the street.

According to the World Air Quality Report published on Tuesday, Pakistan was the second most polluted country in 2023. But we have other kinds of pollution that cannot be measured by scientific instruments.

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: ghazi_salahuddin @hotmail.com