Meltdown

We can be sure that something like this was waiting to happen. And it has come as a flaming precursor of what the dark passions that Imran Khan is setting alight can do in a divided and disturbed country.

Yes, it is difficult to contend with the venomous protest staged within the sacred precincts of Masjid-e-Nabvi. A band ostensibly of PTI supporters accosted and raised slogans against the visiting members of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s delegation.

Videos posted on social media tell the story in horrific details. Also, there is some circumstantial evidence that the protest was planned in advance. We have a hint of it in a clip from Sheikh Rashid’s press talk earlier in the day. In an immediate reaction, some PTI leaders seemed to approve of the ignominious incident.

We have to wait and see how this will play out in a political arena where religious sentiments dictate postures and policies. Imran Khan himself invokes the ideal of Riyasat-e-Madina. So, what has happened in Madina this week should cast a shadow on his inconstant religious vision.

But what Imran Khan says and does has ceased to have any relevance for his supporters who are increasingly behaving like fanatics. We are witnessing the rise of a political movement that is very much like a cult. Pakistan, with its intellectual, cultural, economic and civilizational deprivations, is forever ready for such delusions.

What will come of it is also obvious. Imran Khan is rooting for fresh elections but his campaign is seriously undermining the prospect of a democratic dispensation in this country. This, in many ways, is the crux of it. Can Pakistan move in the direction of finally becoming a democracy, with civilian supremacy?

Before we attempt an answer to this predicament, let us take a look at the existing landscape. The scorching and dangerous heatwave that has engulfed Pakistan – and also India – is bound to affect our senses. It is supposed to be the longest heatwave in our history, raising concerns about power outages, wheat production and economic travails.

Normally, this season – when the month of fasting is coming to an end and there is this long Eid pause – is slow and socially distracting. This year, though, the pace of events is unrelenting. Every day, something very crucial invades our minds. Who, for instance, can answer the questions raised by the suicide bombing by a married and educated Baloch woman in Karachi?

April has been the cruelest month, though not in the sense that the poet had envisioned. Pakistan is on a wild ride, hurtling towards a scary denouement. We have seen Imran Khan’s assault on constitution and law when he refused to accept the vote of no confidence passed against him. He has defined all constitutional norms in his attempt to first block his own ouster from power and, then, the return to power of his pathologically detested political adversaries.

In the process, he has totally been exposed. His supporters ignore the reality of his performance while in power for three and a half years. One argument in his defence, before 2018, was that we have tried others, let us now try a new leader who has charisma and moral credence. Incorruptible, he was seen as.

Certainly, a great tragedy of Pakistan is that we tested Imran Khan – and he failed. Including in a moral context. The Toshakhana episode is remarkable. Stories about Farah Khan, a close family friend, are continuing to emerge. Revelations about where Usman Buzdar had come from and what he did are about to be made. How his era has finally ended is another certification of the PTI’s hostile contempt for constitutional and democratic process, leaving Punjab without any administration for so many days.

From the corruption narrative to the ghaddari and conspiracy narrative, Imran Khan is a born-again leader. (Forget, for the time being, the psychological implications of his being a born-again Muslim.) What remains the same is an arrogant, narcissistic and autocratic individual.

In Pakistan, democracy has repeatedly been truncated or debilitated through military intervention. We should now understand how a populist movement that feeds on hatred and threat of violence is also a threat to democracy. Imran Khan wants his followers to wage a struggle for ‘azadi’ and he is ready to mount an assault on Islamabad with not one but two million people to seek early elections.

But where is he headed, in terms of ideology and vision? He is asking the people to come out for some kind of a revolutionary upsurge to defeat the “imported” regime. But is he aiming to, say, storm the Bastille, which in the present circumstances could be parliament and what it represents?

By the way, it was Gen Ayub Khan, another leader who considered himself a ‘messiah’, who believed that democracy was best suited to cold climates and not to the tropical climate of Pakistan. Imran Khan has said that democracy has only worked in selected Anglo-Saxon countries because they have higher moral standards.

Forget about his earlier assertion that Western culture is corrupting our society. Besides, why is he aspiring to replicate the state of Madina when Pakistan lacks sufficient moral strength? If all this is very confusing for him, it may be because he knows everything better than everyone else – including about the countries where democracy has worked.

For Pakistan, his vision appears to be a populist dictatorship. The personality cult that the present PTI, with the likes of Sheikh Rashid and Fawad Chaudhry playing leading roles, is building is manifestly detrimental to the growth of a democratic culture in the party. Here, the concept of dynasty is reduced to one person, which can be tricky in a country of low political culture.

And unfortunately for the party, that one person has promoted the kind of behaviour that was demonstrated, with all its crudity and a touch of sacrilege, in Masjid-e-Nabvi. So, with politics being reduced to violence and intimidation, where do we go from here?

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