The Rally That Took Us all by Surprise!

Look at it again. It must be the work of a master craftsman - that picture of Imran Khan standing tall in his elegant white round-collar shalwar kameez and black coat and addressing what has been rightfully described as a ‘sea’ of people[1]. Although the night’s darkness seems to have fully encircled the sea of people, there is still a halo that shines above them. It is as though the stars have descended upon them. The night’s darkness represents the despondency that has come to afflict so many of the sensitive souls in our times. Yet, our attention drifts quite naturally to the halo of light, which represents the glimmer of hope that still remains in our people – the glimmer that at gatherings flares up so easily into a blazing fire.

From the cameraman’s well-selected vantage point, right behind the great Khan’s solid shoulders, anyone who can  seep finer realities of the sort which I describe, can clearly see the coming of a new dawn. Sometimes I even wonder: how could some people be blind so as not to see it? How many eyes does one man need, before he can see the rising of the sun, and the break of a glorious dawn? No, you cannot miss the shine in the eyes of the crowd, nor the music in their souls. You cannot miss those glimpses of a new Pakistan. We will be so unfortunate if, for selfish reasons, we tried to wish it away. It’s a different Pakistan which is on its way, a project still in the making. We all have one reason or another to celebrate – and yes, it includes even those of us who, like myself, do not intend to vote for the PTI in the next elections. If we live to see those time, we will be fortunate to have lived that long.

The PTI’s memorable nightly vigil is a cause for celebration. But it shouldn’t be for the wrong reasons. No, it is not because the messiah awaited for has finally arrived on our political scene. Do I need to explain why it would be arrogant for anyone to say this? Sooner or later, you see, we Pakistanis will have to realize that this sort of exclusivist partisan thinking has no place in the politics of a constitutional democracy. Particularly where you have a first-past-the-poll system where the rule is that the winner takes it all, even by one vote. Don’t call me a cynic for saying this. But in set-ups like ours, politics is, and will remain, a rather pragmatic affair. Alliances and compromises with erstwhile political enemies, voluntarily passing the baton to them, these will all have to be a part of the game. And if the business of politics has to be run in this amicable manner, then leaders and followers alike would do well to avoid creating messianic expectations from their own parties, and to stop the demonic vilification of the other parties. Democratic regimes should know that in hard times like these, one’s survival depends upon one’s political opponents. Otherwise, we are in for another 1977. Or another 1999.

So, no, I don’t see in this rally the making of a new Pakistan because I think of Imran as our only hope. I don’t even think like this for the party and the leader whom I do vote for. I think no one should. It doesn’t’ bode well for the health of our democracy. Quite to the contrary, let me propose to to everyone a thought experiment. Imagine a party other your own finding itself in power in the coming elections. Imagine its leaders working as ministers and so on. Imagine them staying there for another five years. Try and get mentally comfortable with this idea. Think, for instance, of Altaf Hussain sitting in the presidency. Much as it revolts you, try to hold it. Or Nawaz Sharif, for that matter, if you don’t like him at all. Or Fazlur Rahman. Or even Zardari, all over again. Try this. Believe me, unless we, as a people, learn to think like this, we are calling for more trouble. Big trouble. Another 1971 of sorts. So you are free to repeat the mantra ‘Imran Khan [or substitute this with the name of any other political leader] is our only ray of hope’, but please don’t sound so damned serious about it.

Whether the kaptaan can ride this tide of enthusiasm generated by this Rally all the way to electoral victory is, for me, is a question that misses the whole point. What really deserves attention is simply all the energy and hope that the Rally has unleashed. Hope works in magical ways. It begets more hope. And it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The logic is simple. Hopeful people invest. Their money. Their time. Their emotions. Their lives. Their families. When the urban middle classes are hopeful about Pakistan and its political prospects, there’s a chance they’ll transfer less of our financial capital to Dubai and Malaysia and the likes. And they’ll exile less of our talent pool, leaving more behind. And talent and money are the potent mix that brings change which slogans and speeches, even rallies can’t.

Then there’s the hope that at least a few dozen of those hundreds of thousands who have suddendy turned into avid cyber-politicians and loud sloganeers will stick it through the thick and thin and mature – and sooner or later carve for themselves a niche in the big bad world of real, on-ground politics. Fresh blood could mean a solution for our long-standing bottle-neck oft exploited by the public relations machinery of the establishment: a chronic shortage of fresh, young, urbane and educated politicians.

Most importantly, in the wake of the Rally, I see Pakistan finally recovering from the debilitating impact of General Musharraf’s “Sab say pehlay Pakistan” project. It’s a little like belated de-toxification. We’ve taken a while, but finally we are recovering and coming back to being the sunny-sounding, starry-eyed, slightly megalomaniac people that we always were. Remember the people who, for decades, refused to treat their seven-times more populous neighbour as anything but an equal. Or the people who believed that their country was, like none other in the world, destiny’s own gift. People who had the glint of dreams in their eyes. That glint in the eyes was our greatest asset, not the atomic bomb, nor the fabled mineral fortunes which lie unexplored beneath our soil. Not even the demographic dividend which we are supposed to be at the cusp of; and certainly not the few hundred highly wanted individual that our armed forces have been opportunistically selling to foreign hunters for prize money. These assets may count greatly in other countries of the world, but our Pakistan was never about all this. The promise of Pakistan was always about its collective ideals and dreams. Dream of a collective reality that is better – not just materially, but in a host of ways – than what we have ever had. The greatest and damnest theft committed by General Musharraf and his powerful liberal fascist lobby was that they stole all this from us. They were a corrupt lot which stole things which cannot be valuated in dollars or rupees. Things which were, and remain, Pakistan’s greatest national asset, our promise. When the general, with all his talk of realpolik and utilitarianism-based public policy, drove our urban middle classes, particularly the younger generation, into the crazy rat races of individual consumerism, that is what he robbed us of. It made us self-hating, sad, and later, cynical. 

Fortunately, the great kaptaan seems to be slowly undoing just this. His achievement (and such things I believe are achievable only by the dint of divine grace) is to bring those same people back into the collective life of the country, who had successfully seceded in the General’s era into the sad world of short-run private plenty. The young ones from amongst the middle classes of urban Pakistan, particularly in the Punjab. That was the kind of people who were the pride of the Rally. The kind of people whom you would other see together and excited only on musical concerts with pricey tickets. Or in the enclaves of private colleges and schools. People whose dreams has collapsed into images of private cars, villas, iPods, foreign university degrees and jobs abroad. They are few in number but they count.

A passionate concern for Pakistan, and the collective destiny of its people including the working classes, seems to be back on their mental map. I consider this the harbinger of historic change. Perhaps, the greatest change that the rally which surprised us all, promises to bring about in its wake.

Of course, this change remains very much an unfinished project. Imran Khan and his army of sincere and well-meaning, though politically untrained enthusiasts now have an historic opportunity in front of them. But they need to be extremely careful as they proceed from here onwards, if they are ever to realize their chances. They need to remember that the shadowy forces which have haunted so much of our history are still around, although they seem to have temporarily withdrawn. But for the historical courage shown by the superior judiciary backed by the legal fraternity, civil society and students, and the equally staunch stand taken by Nawaz Sharif and his party-men for over a decade, those forces would still have been here. These were the same forces which hijacked the political process in the first decade of Pakistan, and which have never since ceased to hold sway. From behind the curtains, they are still watching things closely. And they don’t like the air of it.

For instance, they do not like the idea of an emerging cadre of Imran Khan attracting and training a cadre of popular politicians whom Pakistan’s urban middle classes can truly affiliate with. Because this means that when they do another Kargil, or another 1999, hoping to get another decade-long lease for power, they won’t have the tacit backing which counts at such moments. Instead, the politicians will. These are forces which don’t like the idea of you and me keeping a close eye on how we are governed, and dreaming up change. They’ve been in their comfy positions ever since the colonizers bequeathed us this system of governance where the people’s elected representatives are, at best, mediators between the bureaucratic administrator-rulers and the subjugated-ruled. They will try to jump back into the game at the first chance. Instead of casting other politicians as hate-figures, it is they who should be considered as the PTI’s enemy number one – an enemy which it shares equally with all the other political forces in the country, even those whom it considers incorrigibly corrupted. True that politics is all about alliances; but an alliance with the common enemy would be fatal. It would take the PTI down – and with it, all the democratic forces.

For now though, in the grips of the current euphoria, we can brush these concerns aside. Think about it. A few months back, none of these cynical, alarmist TV anchors (or their blogosphere analogues) who seem to know all, could have possible predicted that this day was coming. These pundits who build themselves lucrative careers feasting upon our hope, will dismiss me for a hopeless dreamer when I say this next thing. But I tell you that I see a brighter day coming. It’s already on its way. I’ve been saying this for a while now[2]. And now I have yet more reason to stick to it. To see what I see, you need look no further than that picture of Imran Khan at the Minar-e-Pakistan standing tall above his sea of supporter. Look at it again. Amidst the darkness of the night there’s a halo of light which surrounds the crowd. It’s the glimmer of hope is their eyes. Hope which is back. And which will help us pass the darkest hour of night, after which it’s going to be dawn. A glorious dawn, I tell you.  

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[1] The PML-N Senator Pervez Rashid’s statement in which he tried to undermine the scale of the gathering is a classic case of trying to spread disinformation, which is an unfair tactic by any standard, and the party would do well to avoid such silly things in the future. Such behavior is a far cry from the party’s avowed slogan of principled politics. That the picture has been photo-shopped is also an allegation which remains to be confirmed; doctored or not, either way, it is a beautiful picture and lavishly deserves the compliments heaped on it.

[2] Referring to my earlier post titled “The Roaring of the Lion and Glimpses into the Future” http://riseofpakistan.net/umergilani/2011/05/17/the-roaring-of-the-lion-and-glimpses-into-the-future/

The Roaring of the Lion and Glimpses into the Future

It is as though he has returned from the dead. Just a few days after destiny dragged him through the dark vale of death on the other side of the mountains of the moon, the Lion of Pakistan returned. And he was roaring. In a rare moment of mental concentration, our otherwise punch-drunk nation listened intently and agreed. We are a people who had almost forgotten what it feels like to listen to a leader who truly and eloquently voices our concerns. The all-too-frequent meek howls of jackals and the wily mutterings of foxes – they could never strike a chord with Pakistan’s aspirations. It was in the thunderous roaring of the engulfed Lion, that we finally found vindication for that basic right long denied to us – the right of representation in the highest halls of power.

When Nawaz Sharif came all out with his charge sheet against our praetorian overlords, who have yet again le the nation down, it was a great national cathartic moment. And more than that, it was a moment of destiny. Absolutely unpredicted by anyone. It wasn’t just the self-obsessed khakis who were taken aback. So inexplicable the whole episode was, that even after it has happened, the carrion-eaters who flourish on analyzing our multifarious miseries and misfortunes, the dementors who build personal careers and reputations by feeding upon whatever little is left of hope in our people, and the great political pundits, they are all dumbstruck. Bewildered, they are still trying “to explain the underlying factors” that might have “caused” this “political gesturing.” But they find nothing to support them; this time round, the Lion has roared and there is little that the misery-mongers can add.

The problem with the carrion-eaters is that their theoretical framework cannot accomodate a major factor which drives history - a factor that clearly does not hold complete sway over the unfolding of history but, equally so, can only be ignored at one’s peril. I am referring to the rare emergence of a moment of destiny accompanied by a man of destiny, who work in tandem to make history. This is what explains the roaring of the Lion. And it even offers us a glimpse into our national future – which turns out to be more promising that what the carrion-eaters would allow for.

At times like these, the professional cynics are left with little to say. By all rational calculus, the Lion of Pakistan had everything to gain by making his peace with the khakis, just like all the other political stakeholders did, even if this meant being treacherous to his temporal political sovereigns – the  People of Pakistan. Only a few weeks ago, as the Lion waged a personal battle for his life in a hospital in London, swinging every hour between life and death, back home, the carrion-eaters were predicting his political demise. And it was quite clear that the forces-who-must-not-be-named were making every possible effort to unite all those who stood against the Lion – so as to deny him an other expected landslide electoral victory, whenever the next elections are held. And yet it is that just two weeks later, when destiny offered the Lion a perfect chance to oblige the khakis for ever by saving them from the wrath of the plebians, he just wouldn’t do it. Right at a time, when the olive branch would make the greatest personal sense for him, risking further enmity and embracing political isolation, the Lion, true to his instincts, decided to roar. Some of his own aides tried to pull him back. But he went all out. Thankfully, the nation has listened, and stands mesmerized by this man of destiny.

The critics cannot make any sense of this because in their profane calculus, there is simply no room to account for a man of destiny and a moment of destiny, even when they do encounter one. This has happened before. It was not too long ago, when another man of destiny, surrounded by five towering men in uniform, trapped deep in the lair of the khakis, simply refused to bow down.  He stood. And the my people stood behind behind. That day, and long after that, the carrion-eaters couldn’t explain what was afoot. Yet, the man of destiny has not ceased to perform his daily share of miracles.

No less a man of destiny is the Lion. The People of Pakistan cannot agree more with him. He has taken a difficult stand and he will have to fight for it, paying a heavy price of blood, sweat and tears. Yet the People will stand with him, just at they stood, and even marched, not too long ago.

The critics still stare with disbelief. In the year 1999, the Lion took a stand. And then, in his hour of need, when he looked back, he found that there was absolutely no one standing behind him. He suffered long years of solitary imprisonment, exile and deceit. By all calculations, he should have learnt his lesson. And after all this, somehow he has again found the courage to become the Lion that he now is. What could possibly explain this? Destiny is one factor, clearly. But so, I dare say, is death.

Isn’t it amazing just how many times has death, both physical and political, engulfed him, and yet been turned back. In the early years of this decade, he seemed destined for the gallows, just like the equally popular and courageous ZAB before him. But in the last hours, destiny saved him. Then, in the opulent surrounding of a posh Jaddah neighborhood, isolated from his soil, he seemed destined for a slow political death – like a flower plucked from its roots. And yet destiny saved him. When the late Mohtarma returned to this country and made here NRO-guaranteed peace with the general and imperial powers, the Lion seemed destined for exclusion from the political process. And yet, just a day before the last date for filing nomination forms, riding on the wings of destiny, he touched Pakistani soil. Still, in the aftermath of Zardari’s election and being played around by the Dogar Court, under whose directions Shehbaz Sharif was disqualified, it again seemed that political death would finally get its long sought target. And yet again, he emerged unscathed. Now, just a few weeks ago, his failing heart seemed finally to be giving in to sorrows that surround my people. His enemies were multiplying, conspiring and consolidating. Yet, there he is. Back in the game. Repeated encounters with death have transformed him. And this is why, today, he is roaring. But where is destiny driving the Lion of Pakistan?

Here I can only share glimpses into the future which in the eye of the heart I beheld, even as I heard the Lion roar. This is the year two-thousand-and-fourteen. For all the critics’ warnings, Pakistan is still very much there. It has a more vibrant Parliament that ever before, now led by the Lion and his compatriots, both the young and fierce and the old and mellowed. Pakistan has the most civilianized executive it has so far had, and, in the wake of their embarrassment after the OBL debacle, the khakis are retreating, bit by bit, to their barricks, doing only that which they do best, leaving everything from governance to urban planning and education to those better suited for these jobs. And we also have the most independent and honest judicial system that we have so far had, since the cursed imperialists stepped in. I look back at 2004. Whatever I see there - a spineless judiciary, a corrupt executive led by khakis who worry about nothing more than their institutional interest, a pliant, King’s Parliament, a nation qietly digging itself a political and economic hole which it would soon plunge into – all of this seems history, by-gone, almost forgotten.

As the Lion roared, in the eye of the heart, this is the Pakistan I saw. The return of truth and courage in politics is an earth-shaking development. It is not just that we are seeing destiny at work, only amidst individuals and moments. My people are all a people of destiny. And it is their dawn, the spotless dawn which they are destined for, which has drawn nigh. Those ofus who can see things, can see it already. It is that close, I tell you. 

Raymond Davis, the man who was a nation...

Right under the daunting gaze of the monstrous Mugamma, in maydan-al-tahrir, the People of the Nile Valley have remained undaunted. And finally, they are winning their freedom. This is independence which should have happened  sixty years agon. But the fact is that it never happened. What happened instead was a dirty trick – actually, a long series of dirty tricks – which ended up further empowering that secular and modernizing fringe of society which the fleeing colonials themselves had fathered and through whom they found it so much easier to govern. In what should have been their moment of truth, what belonged to the vast body of the sha’b was robbed; they have since been struggling to find a footing in the resulting fiasco, even as the colonials went back home.

When the white men fled, he left behind his caricatures, these walking talking lies who are the white man’s revenge. For far too long, we have suffered them. Now, however, they are going, one by one. When Ben Ali fled Tunisia, he took his truck-loads of dollars with him. If only he had also taken his lies with him. Lies about a justice that never came, freedom which was rigged. The people of Tunisia and Egypt still have long battles ahead of them – a battle against the lies, and the walking talking lies. But the light that a man lit with his own life in Tunisia, has spread nonetheless to maydan-al-tahrir. And so far, against all odds, it only seems to spread, farther and wider. Grace has its moments and sacrifices are not all alike; some get acceptance, far and wide.

But here in the much less inspiring situation in Lahore, at the very mundane Mozang , we have just had our own fateful event – an even which tells a story, the gradually unfolding story of a tragic era.

Locked in a dungeon somewhere in Lahore, there is a murderer whose conduct bespeaks that ofhis country. I have been trained as a lawyer and hair-splitting, not generalization, is something close to my day-job. But I have my reasons for concluding that we have caught hold of a man who is a nation.

Raymond Davis’ undoing was his reliance on the doctrine of pre-emptive strike. He hit those two boys because he sensed that they had weapons which they intended to use against him. It’s not that they actually intended to do so. Nor is it that they had actually done anything to provoke him into thinking like this. It’s just that they had guns, and the white man happened to see them and he didn't particularly like it. The risk was small. But it was there. And since his own life was infinitely more precious than that of anyone else around, it was better to be on the safe side. So he shot them. Noot once, not twice. More than six times. It was 'pre-emptive' self-defence, American style.

Because Raymaond, as I said, is a man who is a nation. A nation which went to war against another much-smaller and poorer country on the other side of the globe, just because they thought that this little country had weapons of mass destruction which it might use. America also had weapons of mass destruction; but that didn’t matter because America  America and couldn't possibly ever use these weapons. Except in Hiroshima. And Nagasaki. But that's an old story. No, it wouldn't use its WMDs now. Now, it was Iraq which needed to be bombed and raided because it had WMDs which it just might use. Not against the US, of course. The US is way too far from Iraq. It might, and I stress the 'might' here, use them, if it has them, against Israel. The logic was perverse and contrived to begin with. But, as events unfolded, it would get even worse.

Under the shade of American flag, fire and death and hunger descended on Iraq and it have never really departed. The Americans went there looking for WMDs. And to dismantle a dictator whom they had propped just two decades ago, out of hatred from another familiar enemy - the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. But this was a bonus they would give the Iraqis, the gift of freedom, in addition to cleaning the WMDs. The dictator was duly dislodged; but the WMDs were never found. They could not have been found because, actually, they had never been there. Instead, the Americans found something else to keep themselves busy: regime change.

They weren’t happy with just dismantling the dictator; they wanted to create an altogether new state, something  more democratic, more to their liking. It was a risky thing to do but the risk was mostly Iraqis’, so it was worth taking. Millions of Iraqis would be made guinea pigs in the experiment of cultivating ‘democracy in the Middle East'. Democracy was probably thought of as any form of government which would condone the Israelis exploitation of the Palestinians, and also keep selling cheap oil to the global market until the last drop ran out - something like, perhaps, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. To build this new kind of government, the Americans would need to perform the risky task of dismantling the existing state structure. And that is precisely what they now started doing. They fired the army. And they fired the police. And, on the sides, they stirred up ethnic issues. It was a recipe for disaster.

And very soon, all hell broke loose. On the Iraqis, that is.

Of course, also on the sides, the Americans were busy in a grand day-light robbery, stealing everything precious that Iraq could offer. Oil, ancient artifacts, what not.

And here’s the worst bit. While the Americans has arrived there as the global champions of human rights and democracy, their soldiers were having a field day with innocent Iraqi prisoners. Supposedly freedom-loving and rights-respecting Westerners were teaching some lessons in modernity to their innocent Muslim captives. I use this epithet, “Muslim” not to evoke the feeling of comity which you may have with others in the ummah. That you should have, but it is a separate matter. Here I use the term innocent Muslim captives, because the soldiers who were torturing them were guided by official manuals and guide-books steeped in the worst form of prejudice directed against Muslims. The venom long incubated by orientalists against the followers of the Gracious Prophet was now finding its way directly into the field of combat. And its face was so ugly, everyone could immediately see it for what it is.

Even today, a mere look at the pictures from Abu Gharaib confronts us with another disturbing thought: if this is the fraction which spilled out, just how much ugliness must its perpetrators be harbouring in their hearts. The scenes from Abu Gharaib are a grim reflection on the human condition in desacralized modernity. When we lose our sense of the divine, and the element of the divine in each human being, the crux of essential sanctity which is the guarantor of rights, also dissolves. And without that appreciation, the remaining shell of human rights can easily collapse.

I refuse to believe that individuals such as Private Lynndie England and her collaborators represent a Christian conspiracy against the Islamic world. I am not Christian. But I’m even more adamant in my belief anyone who has even the remotest but real connection with Jesus Christ simply cannot do what they did to us in Abu Gharaib. These criminals are post-Christians – their spiritual condition has falled to this sad and sorry stage, centuries after Christianity lost its battle for the hearts and minds in its own heartlands.

It was bad what they did. But they didn’t stop there. What hurts more is that they also took photographs of it. And they didn’t even take much care to keep those photographs private. Perhaps they wanted to share this preserved evidence of their evil with other communities of evil.

But all of this brings me back to Raymond, the man who is a nation.

Raymond too killed his victims in what he believed was a pre-emptive strike. In his arrogance, he murdered Pakistanis who had no intention to kill him. That’s cruel enough. But he didn’t stop there and he didn’t flee. It seems that something about our prior conduct inspired in him the belief that we wouldn’t care; he could take as many of us down as he wished. So he went on to take photographs of his victims. It was on a busy road and it was mid-day. But it seems that he couldn’t care less.

It was only later that he attempted to flee. And this time, his fellows ran another Pakistan over. And again, they didn’t stop. They went on, dragging the dead body of the victim along with the car. You can never imagine what a Pakistani mother feels like when she’s told that white people have desacralized the dead body of her twenty-one years old in the very streets of her beloved Lahore. Only the sobs of one such mother give us some idea. What sort of a person could be so callous as to do this. Raymond, the man who is a nation.

The death of innocent Pakistanis at the hand of a murderer is in itself a human tragedy. And his trial should now take its due course, right here on our soil. But that is not what we, all one hundred and seventy million of us, need to reflect on.

Of all the questions before us, the one about his personal guilt or innocence, is about the least important. Raymond is just one of many. And, in one sense, his conduct reflect that of his country. The real questions which seriously need our collective attention are: Who does Raymond really work for? Why does he treat us the way he does and what have we done to deserve this? To how many more such people has our government granted visas? How many houses have they hired in Islamabad and elsewhere? Why are they doing all this? Why does our government let them do all of this, even as they function right under its own nose? Where is the Army which is supposed to keep ‘armed enemy combatants’(isn’t Raymond one?) out of our beloved homeland? General Kiyani, keeping in view all the unaccounted-for billions that we and our ancestors have put together to feed your establishment, is this not your failure? Or, for that matter, where is the ISI which was supposed to make sure that armed spies of other countries do not terrorize Pakistanis?

Just as the ugly face of the Iraq war should have been obvious well before the pictures from Abu Gharaib came out, these questions should have been vociferously raised much earlier. But Raymond, the man is a nation, has given us yet another chance to re-examine what we have become and how we are being treated.

Now, when so many of our brethren across the Nile have come together ask the right questions, the time is ripe. The moment is opportune. While Raymond should stay in the jail, his kin should pack up and leave, all of them. We should never have let them come here and take root. We should never have tolerated them in our cities, our neighborhoods and our roads. But even now, when change is everywhere in the air, may we have the courage to rid ourselves of them. May the hand that drives all affirm us in this endeavour. And may He give us the courage to lose what it takes to win, ultimately.