Jinnah’s dream in tatters

Abbas Nasir

10 Nov 2014

Jinnah’s dream is in tatters. Of that there is no doubt. Even more alarming is the fact that we have had to hang our heads in helpless shame countless times in recent years ~ so much so that the ability to look up and find a way forward seems beyond us now.

The Wagah border crossing is the scene of a jarring exercise by the Pakistani and Indian border guards which must damage the spines and brains of the soldiers who take part (for slamming their heels into the concrete floor like they do could hardly be a healthy activity) in a display of futile one-upmanship.

But to several thousand who gather to watch the spectacle staged regularly, you can be sure, it isn’t an exercise in futility. Like so many fictional sources of strength and pride in our lives, it must allow all those gathered to escape the reality of existential threats facing the country and rejoice in how great and mighty we are at soldiery.

So, there was method in the madness of the militants, who used a suicide bomber to target the ‘flag-lowering’ or ‘retreat’ gathering at Wagah border and kill or maim people in multiples of dozens. In one strike, the takfiri militants targeted not just the innocent civilians and spread terror but, in this instance, also exposed the ‘inability’ of the mighty military machine to protect its own showpiece event.

While I may not agree with the purpose of this staged exercise, it was pleasing to see terrorism roundly condemned by one and all. And the very next ‘ceremony’ saw several thousand people gathered at the venue in defiance of the terrorists’ message.

Sadly our outrage, not on social media or op-ed pages of newspapers, but in its manifestation on the ground, is insignificant where it isn’t in consonance with the view of the security state.

Literally 24 hours after a carnage that left dozens dead, there was no fear in evidence as thousands gathered at Wagah to tell the Taliban what they thought of their terrorism. But where the state apparatus remains ambivalent, unsure, complicit or just scared of the perpetrators and their ideology, the public outrage somehow reflects this. How else would you explain that only a few dozen Christian activists and even fewer Muslims took to the streets to protest an atrocity that could only have been possible in Zia’s Pakistan?

Yes, it had to be in Zia’s Pakistan. Didn’t the father of the nation have different views such as the ones encapsulated in his address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed ~ that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”

Where from the Objectives Resolution to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto presiding over legislation, ostensibly at the Saudis’ behest, to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims Jinnah’s thoughts have been under threat, these were totally obliterated during the reign of the dictator who ousted Bhutto from office as Zia used his narrow view of Islam as a means of perpetuating his own power.

The year Zia executed Bhutto, Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan. This was a boon for the dictator as it necessitated a CIA-ISI partnership, funded and fully supported by the Saudi regime, to promote an ideology which may have been more or less alien to the land but which proved effective in creating an army of fanatics; fanatical enough to have humbled the mighty Soviets, at least in the eyes of its patrons.

CIA lost interest (rather foolishly as later events suggest) and moved away after the objective of the Soviet humiliation had been achieved but CIA’s regional partners didn’t sever the umbilical cord as they had other plans for this ideology and its fast-multiplying adherents.

Even with the restoration of whatever diluted form of democracy through the late 1980s and 1990s, elected, civilian governments remained powerless to act against the huge resilient plant that had sprouted from the seeds sown by Zia.

There were two main reasons for this. First was the civilian leaders’ preoccupation with remaining in the saddle despite what they often, rightly, saw as the impatient, power-hungry military’s reticence.

And second was their preoccupation with amassing personal fortunes rather than focusing on the public good and making efforts to cement democratic norms in society which could promote plurality and tighten the noose for bigotry.

Many years ago, one political leader, in a rare display of candour, justified this corruption to me by saying: ‘Elections are a hugely expensive affair. We are never sure how long we’ll be allowed to govern for. So we need the funds to prepare for the next polls which could be in five months rather than the mandated five years.’

Why then should we be surprised that a Christian couple was mobbed and when nearly half-dead pushed into a brick kiln by self-righteous members of the dominant faith; why should our eyes well up when we see their three small orphaned children; why should we even bother to read the news of the Shia man hacked to death by a policeman in a police station?

Why should we not pour scorn over the handful clamouring for the release of Asia Bibi when so many of us didn’t even have the courage to attend the funeral of the governor who spoke up for her and was mowed down by his own police guard?

We remain unmoved no matter what the peril. We wait. Wait for a miracle or wait in the hope that the fate that is inevitable will somehow pass us by harmlessly. What else would explain our apathy to the savagery that surrounds us?

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.