Bread and circus

They say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But if you’re the Captain and your starting gambit itself was patriotism, where do you turn to as the walls cave in?

Enter religion, which has served the Khan well over time. But in its earlier incarnation religion was something done to him -- a means of reinvention, a path to spiritual awakening, a cleansing of past deeds and an erasure of a life lived a bit too far to the fullest to be palatable for our middle-class moralities.

Religion was the moral shield that helped make the conqueror of Knightsbridge palatable to the Khans of Khyber. In ditching Saville stitching for the shalwar kurta, our Captain lost the paparazzi but gained Pashtuns and Punjabis -- a worthwhile trade that carried him all the way to the house in Islamabad’s hills.

But here’s the funny thing about chasing impossible dreams: sometimes they catch up with you. And in the Khan’s case, he didn’t just catch up with his dream, he slammed into it with the full force of a Mack truck.

Mario Cuomo, the philosopher-governor of New York, used to say you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. And the prose of Pakistani governance is poisoned, perhaps irredeemably so. Leave aside the compromises needed to ascend the throne, it’s the impossibility of delivering in the system where the math just doesn’t add up.

We have promised too much to too many for too long without any credible path to deliver. The population is too large, the resource base too small and sacred cows -- defence! agriculture! real estate! -- too many. Layer on the smug incompetence of the current setup (LNG debacle, anyone?) and the result seems preordained.

In retrospect, it was cruelly comical to expect the Khan and his rag-tag bunch would be able to deliver amidst such decay. When your governance vocabulary begins and ends at the ABC -- all ‘bout corruption -- you perhaps should consider alternate options as election season approaches.

The ancient Romans had a word for such a plan -- they called it bread and circus. The act of generating public approval not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace.

Of course, the whole thing about bread is a non-starter in our inflationary environment, unless the Khan wants to risk his very own Marie Antionette moment. But distractions there could be a plenty. For inspiration our leader need only look across to the Saudi kingdom where, seemingly overnight concerts by boldface names like Mariah Carey, Pitbull, the Black Eyed Peas suddenly abound, and sporting events from wrestling to golf to formula E racing are all the rage.

Just our luck then that the Captain leans spiritual rather than spectacle. And Pitbull type stuff costs the kind of hard currency we sorely lack. So, is it any surprise that religion gets its encore in the Khan’s oeuvre? This time not as something done to him, but as something he will do unto the masses.

Let us start to count the ways. The gratuitous religiosity of the Single National Curriculum where religion seeps into science, math and general knowledge. The nazra that duplicates instruction already imparted in most homes. The apparent redundancy of a Rehmatallil Alameen Authority that will do things a half-dozen state entities are already supposed to be doing. Establishment of religious directorates in the Ministry of Education. The joyless banning of music in public transport during much of Rabi-ul-Awal. A prohibition on expressions of affection – “hug and caress scenes” – on broadcast TV. And now the sorry spectacle of the prime minister, flanked by an array of the officious and the obsequious, chairing meetings on blocking pornography in the country. How many had to do a double take on that last one to confirm that it wasn’t some subversive Onion headline?

You have to wonder whether the Captain gets that Pakistan -- paraphrasing Jay-Z -- has ninety-nine problems but religion ain’t one. In a land of scarcity, the one thing demonstrably in abundance is religiosity – on our streets, in our discourse, in our homes and across our communities. We’ve been at it at least since Bhutto’s belated awakening and have little to show for it except a surfeit of blood and tears. Is it too much to ask then that someone enlighten our leader about Einstein’s theory of insanity -- doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.

The Captain’s actions reek of desperation, evidence of a shrinking circle of autonomy in a government beholden to others. When he ran on the poetry of the Medina-ki-Riyasat, most imagined the prose of delivery would translate to justice and welfare. What we’re getting instead is more religion in schools and moral police in our personal spaces.

It’s hard to see how this ends well. Bhutto’s decline accelerated with his capitulations on religion. The Khan may still make it to the finish line or to even lead the next race thanks to divine powers of the earthy kind, but his legacy is under violent stress. A man who came to office with grand plans of a national revival is reduced to haranguing the nation on religious dogma and puerile rants on piety even as power and time ebb away.

The wasted promise is Shakespearean in its arc -- Lear howling at the wind -- but in deference to the Captain’s patriotic sensibilities, Faiz surely provides the most fitting coda:

ye daagh daagh ujala ye shab-gazida sahar

vo intizar tha jis ka ye vo sahar to nahin

ye vo sahar to nahin jis ki aaruū le kar

chale the yaar ki mil jaegi kahin na kahin

[This leprous brightness, this dawn with reeks of night

This is not the one – the long-awaited morn

This is not the shining light which beckoned

Beckoned men ever onwards, to go on seeking]

The writer, a former aide to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, tweets @aliahsan001