A family of thieves

I belong to a distinguished, educated family. Unfortunately, it happens to be a family of thieves – a mafia. It is a family that is multiplying fast and growing in power and influence and, I must confess, in criminality. I am not sure about the size of my family but you can safely put it at 40 millions. What is most intriguing, my family, the middle-class Pakistani, is at the vanguard of a revolution against corrupt rulers.

The middle class has just thrown out the Godfather of a mafia – who happened to be the prime minister of Pakistan. Usually, mafias are self-perpetuating and select their own members. In this case, he was the most popular leader of the country. But as you can very well argue, a criminal is a criminal and being an elected leader does not give you the right to be corrupt.

The prime minister was sent home because he did not declare the salary he was supposed to receive from his son but which he had not received. The legal process was undertaken by lawyers and honourable judges, as is the proper way of doing things. However, only one percent lawyers pay taxes in the country. The ablest of these lawyers who become judges do not necessarily belong to the one percent who pay taxes. In 2014, for example, the Supreme Judicial Council appointed 12 high court judges; seven of them hadn’t paid tax, one was without a national tax number and four paid negligible tax.

Let’s not single out the community that carries the flag of revolution. Only two percent doctors pay taxes though the poor nation spends millions of rupees on educating each and every doctor. Obviously, like everywhere else, if a doctor or lawyer does not make enough to be in the tax net, he should be selling sausages. But this formula will turn Pakistan into a nation of sausage sellers. Traders for example, hold close to a quarter of Pakistan’s economy in their hands but not even one percent of them pays taxes.

Through an unwritten agreement, the rulers instead of forcing these good people to pay their taxes, tax the poor indirectly and resort to begging and borrowing from rich countries and multilateral institutions. A good part of the gap is filled through remittances sent by the poor workers toiling in the Gulf. But begging and borrowing comes under attack from revolutionaries who want a welfare state that takes care of their proverbial dogs at state expense, as happened during the times of Muslim empires. That would require us to conquer some rich countries. Perhaps, that’s the reason most Taliban cheerleaders are found in this class.

This is the class of the sadiq and the ameen who have risen in rebellion against the corrupt rulers. Even ‘the ruling elite’ is such a perplexing term in Pakistan’s context. Pakistan has been ruled for half of its existence by the middle class salariat directly and for the rest of the time indirectly. The larger urban middle class feels more comfortable when there is no democracy and becomes quite jittery when there is democracy.

During democracy, a different kind of elite starts ruling the country – at least symbolically. The elected elite mostly comprises the traditional elite and newly rich people but they are there not because they are rich but because they are elected by the poor. They may be rich but they carry the stink of poverty and illiteracy because of this association. The prime minister who has just gone home used to eat nihari. Imagine a nihari-eating person ruling burger eating folks. What an insult.

Anyone supporting him is called a patwari. Why a patwari? (A patwari is no more corrupt than an engineer or a police officer). Because patwari has an association with land and rural areas and he does not qualify to be a member of the middle class despite belonging to the salariat.

Pakistan’s middle class is a leading slave-owning class in the world. With more than two million slaves, Pakistan ranks fifth on the Global Slavery Index. Almost all human slavery in this country happens in the homes and small businesses owned by the middle class. Dead bodies of the slave children are recovered routinely from houses of honourable revolutionary Pakistanis. Some are recovered alive, only to slave away at another home.

Once upon a time, when this class was smaller and poorer, it was considered a carrier of high culture. It used to produce world class poets, writers, intellectuals and activists. Not any longer. It consumes foreign popular culture and produces nothing.

When Bang-e-Dara was first printed, there was not a single educated Muslim house in South Asia that did not have a copy. Thousands used to gather every year just to listen to a poem from Iqbal. Their leaders still refer to ‘Illama Iqbal’ in their jalsas, but have no clue what he wrote or stood for. They either revere him based on their school textbooks or hate him for the same reason. It is the cheap pulp fiction you find on their bookshelves and in their legal documents.

Not very long ago, we used to have political gatherings that did not carry the fragrance of deodorants, but stank of human sweat. But the speeches made in these jalsas could still be printed as masterpieces of literature. When Asghar Khan left the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan recited this line from Iqbal in a jalsa: “Moj hai darya main aor beroon-e-darya kuch naheen” (A tide belongs to the river; outside the river it has no existence). Think of someone leaving the great middle class party today. He will be a zaleel shakhs, beghairat aadmi, and a sell-out. These titles will come from the top of the pulpit, on loudspeakers, and twenty thousand educated ladies and gentlemen will howl and cheer to the mesmerising chant.

Their sufism is a caricature – a mere excuse for an alternative lifestyle. Think of taking your lesson in mysticism from the great sufi master, Salman Ahmad. Their Rumi is an American translation of a part of his poetry, totally decontextualised from his larger message and the fountain of wisdom he draws upon. Can you believe this class once used to read Hafiz in Persian?

Now something even worse has happened. Just as grasshoppers turn into locust in certain conditions, a section of Pakistan’s middle class has formed hordes. These hordes carry unmistakable signs of Western youth culture. They have found a messiah and throng around a political party that shows characteristics of a religious cult. Nurtured on a misguided narrative and fired by the power of testosterone, these hordes attack anything and anyone that appears threatening or is pointed as a legitimate target.

The relentless attack on Ayesha Gulalai from these misogynist, barbaric hordes is a sign of things to come. We have already experienced a middle-class revolution in Karachi, symbolised by drills and TT Pistols. The new national middle class revolution may surpass the first one in its fascism.

There is only one hope against this mass neurosis – the diversity of Pakistani society. As happened in old contagions, there is some safety in physical distance. Similar immunity is provided by the class. The poor are not willing to buy the snake oil that has never provided any cure to their problems. They know these revolutionaries too well. After all, they are their slave masters. There was a time when the middle class youth used to sign songs for the poor. “We are a burden on earth,” wrote Nasir Kazmi in one of his immortal poems. “Where are those who used to carry earth’s burden?”

PS: I am thankful to Umar Cheema, a distinguished journalist working with this paper, for statistics on taxation. His ground-breaking work on the situation of taxation in Pakistan has been recognised and adopted as a model internationally.

The writer is an anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan