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face to face Yeh
Woh follow-up Graduating
to an issue Sceptic’s
Diary
face
to face The first time I
was recommended to read William Dalrymple’s work was about a year ago. This
was when I was working on my first book, a travelogue and a historical
narrative.
“White Mughals”
is his most famous work, yet enticed by the title and the cover
picture I chose “City of Djinns”
to start with. In the words of the book, I found my voice. I had been
unsure as to how to combine travel with history and journalism but the book
made it clear for me. I was particularly interested in how the author used
oral history interviews to create a larger picture of the history of Delhi. It was also for the first
time I was reading a historian who was able to draw a link between the
contemporary and the past with so much ease. Dalrymple became my favorite
author and this love affair continues. Soon after, I emailed him
introducing my work to him and also expressing a desire to meet him in Delhi
or Lahore, depending on who was travelling where. I was surprised by his
quick response and the lack of inhibition he had for any such arrangement.
However, nothing materialised because of our individual schedules. An opportunity finally
emerged last week when he travelled to Lahore for the literary festival. I
sneaked past the security and somehow managed to find him. On introduction,
he recognised me immediately and took me to the author’s lounge amidst the
protest of the organisers. While I was reading
“City of Djinns”, I had no idea what the
“White Mughals”
was about, but then in the book there is a part when he talks about
William Fraser and other early colonial officers. It becomes quite evident
that he is fascinated by the topic. You can trace the origin of
“White Mughals”
in the
“City…”, I asked him as we sipped black coffee in the lounge,
with Mohsin Hamid sitting on our right. “That’s an old book! Yes. I got
obsessed with the topic. Later, when the book came out I received bundles of
photographs sent to me by various people of their ancestors with long
Mughal-ish beards, earlier hidden in their personal vaults.” The conversation continued
as I took out his books from my bag for autograph:
“In Xanadu”, “City of Djinns”, “From the Holy Mountain”,
“Nine Lives…”
and
“White Mughals”. “You are a groupie,” he
told a blushing me. I know it’s really an
inappropriate question but which one is your favourite out of all your books?
“My latest one,” he told me with a chuckle. “It’s always the latest
one.” I had seen the newly printed editions of the
“Return of a King”
in a pile at various books stalls at the festival but hadn’t yet
purchased it. Sobering down he said, “It’s this one,” tapping an old
man walking in the ruins of the Byzantine Empire on the cover of
“From the Holy Mountain”. “It’s not much popular
in South Asia because it is about Middle East. I was away for nine months for
this one.” In this book, using the
techniques of journalism, a historian, an anthropologist, a pilgrim and a
traveller, Dalrymple has beautifully narrated the plights of Christians
living in the Middle East, in the environment of a rising political Islam.
The book particularly attracted me because it dealt with the issues of
minorities and that’s what I was working on. What is so special about the
book is how he doesn’t look at the religious minorities in isolation but
looks at them in contrast to the society they are living in — one marred by
jingoistic nationalism and the rise of fundamentalist Islam. The book made me
realise that in order to show something beautiful one needs to highlight the
ugly. Four of his initial books
are travel accounts in the Middle East and South Asia, while the last three
books are history books. Reading all of his books in a chronological order
one can see clearly how he has evolved as a writer and become an orthodox
historian from a travel writer who would also write about history. However,
in their approach, his latest books are a departure from his earlier style.
Why does he not write travelogues anymore?” “That’s because I have a
family now; wife, kids. I can’t afford to be away for long.“Nine
Lives…”
is my last travel book.” And I think for that book
he may not have needed to a travel a lot anyway, I ask. With stories of nine
individuals associated with different religious cults, the book aims to
search for a religious country in the backdrop of a ‘shining India’. This
is one of his less popular books but an amazing one nonetheless. However,
unlike his other travel accounts, the book is not a continuous journey but
interviews of nine people which the author has come across in India, where he
has been living for the past thirty years – ever since the
“City of Djinns”. “You are right. Some of these people I have
known for years, while I met others by an accident.” Suddenly he said, “Do you
know Mohsin? Mohsin meet Haroon,” he said as I extended a hand towards
perhaps the best-known Pakistani author in English language. “He is writing
a book on ‘exotic’ Muslim shrines. Right up my street,” said Dalrymple
as he let out another laugh. While I explained my work
to Mohsin Hamid, Dalrymple got busy socialising with other writers
introducing me to all. I was amazed by his energy. You know what I love about
“White Mughals”
sir, I tell him as soon as he is done talking to Raza Rumi. Dalrymple
is impatient, not for anything particularly, but as a person. Instead of
narrating history through individuals, which is how it is usually, you’ve
explained the environment, the culture, of which those individuals were a
product. “There is nothing new in that technique. I am in fact following an
established tradition of writing history in Britain. You should read
“The Aristocrats”. It’s a marvellous book. Asma dear! where is
the session on Vasco da Gama. I want to attend that one,” he said as he got
up to head towards Hall 3. There are too many
questions to be asked, but I can’t think of them. I have never been so
star-struck. “Do send me your stuff. I would love to read it. But give me a
couple of weeks for that,” he said laughing as he seems to do on every
comment and headed out of the door. I didn’t get a chance to
meet him again but I did attend his session with Ahmed Rasheed titled
“Cultures in Conflict”. “I have often been told by students in
India, which I am sure also applies to Pakistan that history is their least
favorite subject. That’s because of the way it’s taught here. It could be
really interesting,” he began his session with the aforementioned words and
then gave a short presentation on his new book. Looking around the hall, I
was surprised to see it packed to the brim. For a historian to be so popular
is really incredible. “As a foreigner how have
you managed to capture the essence of India so well, even outdoing the native
writers?” asked Sabar, one of my friends and another groupie, at the end of
the session. “I have lived here for thirty years. I have friends here. I
have travelled around the place. I feel more at home here than I do anywhere
else. The environment and culture here in India is more to my liking,” he
explained. Listening to his answer, I
thought of the most important question I had wanted to ask. “Are you a
white Mughal?”
The consumers of
natural gas, especially in the northern region of the country, got a shock of
their lives last month. Exactly when they were thinking this commodity was
fast disappearing from their lives, it made them realise its presence with a
bang. In fact the monthly gas
bills they received this time were many times more than what they had been
receiving in the preceding months, when the gas supply was normal. For a
moment they thought they were eating, drinking, inhaling and even dreaming
this gas. They could not figure out
how the billed amount could be so high for a month in which they had used gas
cylinders and bought cooked food from bazaar. Low gas pressure and gas
load-shedding during the month of December had kept people away from their
kitchens. A simple answer to all
these complex questions comes from the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL)
public relations office. In a statement it explains the bills are naturally
high due to high consumption during the month and the carefree attitude of
consumers. The consumers feel the pinch as marginal increase in consumption
and application of a higher tariff slab leads to an exponential increase in
the bill, it adds. Disgruntled consumers
reject this justification saying this is not the first time they have endured
winter and the gas bills arriving in its aftermath. “Why is it so the
billing is erratic just for a month? The winter season is spread over three
to four months at least. But this does not happen throughout the season,”
questions Muhammad Shahid, a lawyer by profession. He tells TNS his gas bill
was around Rs 1,000 for the month of November but next month it surpassed Rs
10,000. This was despite the fact that the family was out of town for half of
the month. Clueless in the beginning,
it took him a couple of visits to the regional SNGPL office and brawls with
some unaccommodating officials to understand where the problem lied. It was
true the tariff had increased marginally but the real culprit was the formula
applied to calculate bills. Unlike in the past, the
SNGPL is now calculating bills solely on the basis of highest slab
applicable, says Shahid. “This means the lower rates applied on the units
consumed in the start are no more there. All the units in my bill have been
multiplied with the highest applicable tariff rate.” A glaring example of what
can happen in the presence of this formula follows. If someone consumes 2.99
Hm3 the bill is around Rs 2750 and if the consumption increases by just a
unit or two more i.e to 3.01 Hm3, the bill jumps to Rs 6,600. This means mere
increase of 0.02 Hm3 when you are close to a slab can cost you Rs 3,850
extra. An SNGPL official states
the formula is effective for many months but its impact has been the severest
in the month of December. “The reason is simple: extraordinarily high
consumption of gas and nothing else.” The official who does not want to be
identified says the natural gas is being sold to domestic consumers for
peanuts. “The company is under immense financial stress and has no other
way but to rationalise tariffs to come out of it.” Another major complaint
against SNGPL is the issuance of random bills by meter readers who do not
bother to visit sites to take readings. Ahmed Nadeem, a disgruntled consumer
who works at a publishing house, has filed complaints with concerned
authorities but to no avail. He tells TNS there are a few SNGPL offices in
every city making it cumbersome for meter readers to travel long distances
and record meter readings. “They send nominal bills
for a few months and then a highly inflated one, based on the number of units
accumulated over months. This enables them to apply highest tariff slabs and
collect huge revenues,” he complains. The SNGPL official says
this happens in very few cases and the practice is not as common as claimed.
The company, he reveals, is working to make meter readers check gas meters
with Automated Meter Readers (AMRs). These AMRs will take snaps of meters and
the images showing readings will be printed on gas bills along with the date
and time of the visit. “The images will be fed
into a server and no one including the highest official will be able to
tamper it. This will put an end to compounded bills as well as filing of fake
complaints.” The plan seems great on
paper but its realisation remains a dream since AMRs were introduced on an
experimental basis a good three years ago. Years down the road, its
implementation is pending for no genuine reasons. “How can the company take
a step which hits its financial interests badly? It’s the easiest way for
them to collect extra revenues,” says Nadeem who believes the mafia of
meter readers will not let the plan succeed. TNS contacted Oil and Gas
Regulatory Authority (OGRA) for comments and was told by its spokesman that
the authority was inundated with such complaints against inflated bills. He
added a high level OGRA team was present in Faisalabad at that time to hear
cases of inflated bills sent by SNGPL to domestic and industrial sector and
the CNG pump owners. An SNGPL source says the
authority is trying every possible measure to avoid financial collapse,
caused mainly by unviable political decisions. The source adds that in 2008,
the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), on the recommendations of a
parliamentary sub-committee, decided to raise the territorial limit for new
gas connections from a well head to 1500 kilometers up from the previous 250
kilometers. This means more operational costs including those required for
laying of infrastructure to supply gas to distant localities. Secondly, it
was also decided in the same meeting to raise the bar of Rs 20,000 to Rs
57,000 — the cost which SNGPL can incur on adding every new consumer to its
network. Adding insult to injury,
OGRA has also taken a pro-consumer stance instead of backing SNGPL —
something very rare in its history. This shift has been attributed by many to
the Supreme Court’s decision against the authority’s ex-chairman Touqeer
Sadiq. There are allegations that Touqeer had raised the acceptable limit of
Unaccounted For Gas (UFG) from 4.5 per cent to 7 per cent during his tenure.
This, experts claim, is tantamount to allowing theft of gas with impunity.
Yeh Woh There are
justifications and then there are excuses. There can be a hundred excuses,
they say, but not one justification. Nothing justifies a violation or an
omission. There is no justification
for not voting, for instance. Politicians are the proverbial dog tails that
cannot be straightened. And their masters, the generals, are in no hurry to
give up power voluntarily. Nothing will change. Election is just an eye-wash.
The same set of people will continue ruling us and abusing us. All the party
flags are made of the same recycled rag; there is no difference in style,
only in colours. The leadership of all major parties is corrupt and complicit
in each other’s corruption. These statements may or may
not be correct but they are bad excuses for not voting. If anything, these
are very good reasons to vote. If you don’t have anyone to vote for, vote
against someone. If you don’t want your vote to count in favour of or
against any party or candidate in your constituency, stamp it in two three
places. If enough voters spoil their votes, that’s a loud and clear
statement about how people feel towards politics. But not being counted among
those who used their vote is a confused admission that I either don’t care
about politics or I have never thought about it, or I’m sure politics is
inherently corrupt and therefore must be avoided by all ‘clean’ upright
citizens. A clear majority of Pakistani voters falls in this category, and
include forcefully vocal supporters of one or the other political party who
know and discuss enough politics in a day. These are the people most in need
of change, and they are the ones with awareness that democratic change comes
at a painfully slow pace, and they are the ones who do not give democracy a
chance. That is people like you. People like me. If you are prepared to test
the power of your vote in the upcoming elections, you may be pleasantly
surprised at the quantity and quality of choice candidates present you. I am
thinking of khawaja saras — India has several as elected members of
Parliament — their campaigns are always well attended and thoroughly
entertaining. I am thinking of Saleem Kirla who introduced himself as
‘iqtadar key bhookon mein aik aur izafa’ (another one of the
power-hungry), then promised voters he’ll make every effort to divert state
funds towards his constituency, and that he’ll share the money fairly with
everyone who votes for him. He quickly developed such a cult following that
the big parties’ candidates fought a bidding war to buy him out of the
race, in their favour. I am thinking of Maulana
versus Musarrat Shaheen contest. I am thinking of Haroon Rashid who announced
himself as a candidate for president of Pakistan and then campaigned
tirelessly on the streets of Sargodha where large crowds turned up to hear
his charged, well articulated speeches. Only, he needed Parliamentarians’
support, and not that of the voters I am thinking of. No, seriously. The list of
candidates on the ballot paper is always longer than your hate list. You find
names of independent candidates you never heard of during the campaign. There
are smaller parties you never knew existed. And among these little known
parties and individual candidates, is the person who is honest, educated, and
motivated enough to represent your interests in the Parliament and to pursue
a pro-people agenda in their legislative work. But if they don’t advertise
their candidacy how will you know, and vote for them? Electioneering in the
traditional sense is an expensive business. You pay a party to get the
ticket, you spend on posters and banners, you feed scores of people every day
for several weeks, you hire transport and a team of workers, you bribe voters
and officials … The candidate of a major party spends millions of rupees
just to make himself or herself known to you. You, on the other hand see all
this spending and you know this is another punter investing his or his
financiers’ money to buy power. These are the candidates you don’t want
to vote for. This is the voter’s
dilemma then: the candidates that reach out to you are mere punters, and the
honest ones do not have the money to advertise. The only solution is for the
voters to make an effort to get to know all the candidates in their
constituency before making a decision. You’ll make the effort
because this is the most important decision you are going to make in five
years. masudalam@yahoo.com
follow-up The Punjab police
claims to have arrested and detained at least 50 LeJ activists including one
month detention for the much-maligned LeJ chief, Malik Ishaq, under the
Maintenance of Public Order Law. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a
militant wing of hardliner anti-Shia Deoband Muslims, and an aligned
organisation of the defunct Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Ahle Sunnat Wal
Jamaat (ASWJ), has claimed responsibility of almost all sectarian attacks in
the country in recent months. Before the crackdown began, Maulana Muhammad
Ahmed Ludhianvi, chief of ASWJ, was consistently uttering his anti-Shia
tirade in repeated interviews. Acoording to a police
official, these crackdowns were conducted in Rahim Yar Khan, Khanewal,
Muzaffargarh, Bahawalnagar and some other districts of Punjab after the
deaths of at least 200 Hazara Shia in two attacks in the past few weeks and
target killing of many other people in Karachi and Lahore. Apart from countrywide
protests organised by the Shia and supported by the civil society, the
federal government’s consistent pressure on the Punjab government —
articulated largely in the Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s statements —
to act against the LeJ and its network apparently seems to be a major reason
behind these crackdowns. The reason why this
crackdown did not happen earlier was because of some alleged political ties
between the PML-N and the leadership of LeJ and ASWJ. ASWJ denies any link
with LeJ or SSP, while the police and intelligence operatives think
otherwise. PML-N, reportedly, is said to be in an electoral patch-up with the
ASWJ to support each others’ candidates in the next general elections. The agreement, made through
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah and ASWJ Chief Maulana Muhammad Ahmad
Ludhianvi aims at seat adjustments in the next general elections — a factor
apparently a hurdle in taking action against LeJ. According to some report,
even the ruling Pakistan People’s Party has been contemplating many such
electoral alliances. According to the police,
the main leadership of LeJ, mainly comprising Malik Ishaq in Punjab, Akram
Lahori in Karachi with further connections in Quetta and suburbs of
Baochistan, is masterminding all these attacks and provoking hate speech
against the Shias. The LeJ, according to police sources, is also working
under the umbrella of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and has also been
found involved in planning, facilitating and executing various attacks
against law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the Punjab province. In the recent crackdown,
Punjab Government has also arrested Malik Ishaq for one month. He was
released after almost 14 years in July 2011 when no evidence was found
against him. Later, he was put under house arrest for a month. He was
detained for 24 hours after the LeJ claimed responsibility for the killing of
29 Shia pilgrims in Mastung area of Balochistan. Ishaq was detained for one
month to pre-empt sectarian strife because his release had instantly caused
sectarian tensions because of the anti-Shia sermons he started delivering
soon after being set free. In December 2011, the
Provincial Review Board agreed to extend the detention period for another 30
days. Lahore High Court finally released him for lack of evidence on January
20, 2012. Malik Ishaq was again detained on August 30, 2012, from Lahore. He
was questioned for making hate speech but he was freed within two weeks, as a
local court granted him bail for lack of evidence. Only a week after his
release, Ishaq was appointed as the vice president of the ASWJ with the
‘assurance’ that he would remain peaceful. Seeing detention of these
leaders and activists in jail for a month and their release through court for
lack of proofs against them, Shia organisations question the purpose of these
crackdowns on the LeJ and consider all these acts as an eye-wash. They have considered these
‘crackdowns’ a temporary act to pacify emotions of the community, says
Ameen Shaheedi, leader of Majlis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen, a prominent Shiite
organisation. Interior Minister Rehman
Malik publicly said that two groups of LeJ were operating in Pakistan — one
under Malik Ishaq and the other under the leadership of Maulana Ludhianvi. “All provinces need to
take action against terrorism. If the Punjab government had acted on the
letters sent by him pertaining to the LeJ, a tragedy such as the one on
Kirani road in Quetta would not have taken place. A list of 734 terrorists
had been provided to the Punjab government and those people should have been
arrested but the Punjab government took only half-hearted action against LeJ,”
says Ameen Shaheedi. “Nobody should even think
that the Punjab Government is allied with the terrorist groups for political
gains,” says Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah. “There are no proofs
against the leaders of master-minding terrorist attacks. We took them to the
court but they were acquitted. If the federal government or intelligence
agencies have any proof against any such person, they should come up with
them to make sure such terrorists are sentenced by the courts.” Political and security
analyst Ayesha Siddiqa says this crackdown will not be effective at all. This
is an eye-wash to diffuse the situation and cannot solve the problem. “This small crackdown is
limited only to arrest old activists on the Fourth Schedule of the government
and many of them are not even terrorists now,” she says. “This is the least the
government could do to bring down the rising temperature. When real
terrorists are arrested, the ISI takes them from the police and then you
don’t know what happens to them. Also, these counter terrorism departments
of political governments are not technically and financially equipped,” she
says. She says we need our
establishment’s active interest in ending the menace. Without their will,
there is not going to be a solution. She cites the 1990s operation of PML-N
against sectarianism, saying even then the government was alone in taking
action and there was no proper support from the mighty corners. Shaukat Javed, former chief
of Punjab police and head of Intelligence Bureau in the province, further
terms this crackdown a mere waste of time, energy and resources. Even the
list of Fourth Schedule people is not accurate or scrutinised for the past
many years. During my tenure, a couple of years ago, a committee was set up
involving all agencies to revise this list but nothing happened except delays
in meetings and decisions.” The job was done in a half-hearted way. He says the solution lies
in sound prosecution and legislation. “Currently, there are 76 terrorists
who have been sentenced to death by anti-terrorists courts and their sentence
is pending before the President of Pakistan, as the government has stopped
executing death sentence,” he says. “After all we need to set some
examples.” He says, in the tribal
areas, no provincial laws apply so how can the governments take action
against those who have taken shelter there? “We need to think about these
issues rather than wasting our time in the wrong direction.” vaqargillani@gmail.com
Graduating to an
issue The issue of
‘fake’ degrees has become the most debated issue of the parliament after
a letter was issued in the name of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) to 249
parliamentarians on February 7, 2013, to have their degrees verified
including Secondary and Higher Secondary School Certificates from Higher
Education Commission (HEC). The letter stated in clear
words that those who would fail to submit their degrees within 15 days would
be treated as fake degree holders and face criminal proceedings. Only 26
parliamentarians respected the deadline set by the CEC. This issue of degrees of
parliamentarians came to limelight first in 2010 when the Supreme Court sent
some lawmakers home after their degrees proved fake. The SC asked the ECP to
verify academic credentials of all parliamentarians with the help of the HEC.
The HEC asked all 1,168 legislators to submit their educational degrees. In
next couple of months the HEC found degrees of 56 parliamentarians fake or
invalid. A tug of war started between parliament and the HEC after that and
several parliamentarians refused to submit their matriculation and
intermediate certificates, a requirement necessary to validate graduation
degrees. The issue died down by
middle of 2011 but the CEC’s letter once again has brought the issue to the
fore. The letter according to the
ECP sources was part of the 2010 order of Supreme Court of Pakistan in which
it asked the commission to get degrees of all parliamentarians verified. But,
political parties in the parliament sans the MQM took it as an attack on
parliament. Opposition leader in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali
Khan on February 20, 2013 on the floor of the house strongly objected to the
‘insulting’ language of the letter and refused to submit his degrees to
the ECP. “We have been made a joke, with the media spreading baseless
stories and flashing contemptuous headlines,” said Nisar. The PPP and PML-Q
also endorsed him. The MQM in the parliament talked in favour of verification
of the degrees while Imran Khan criticised both the PPP and PML-N over their
stance on the issue. The Speaker National
Assembly also formed an eight member special parliamentary committee headed
by Law Minister Farooq H. Naek to convey the concerns of the parliamentarians
to the CEC. A member of the committee
on condition of anonymity says that the ECP instead of focusing on the dead
issue of degrees should focus on the elections. “The issue has been brought
to limelight out of the blue. Some elements want to extend the tenure of the
caretaker government because of the fake degrees issue. Graduation is no more
a condition for contesting elections. 32 Pakistani parliamentarians have
already been penalised for fake degrees,” he says. The Commission earlier
wanted to extend the scrutiny period for nomination papers of candidates from
the existing seven days to 30 days. But the parliament has allowed extending
the period to 14 days only. Last week, the ECP also
finalised the new nomination form for the candidates for 2013 elections and
sent it to the Ministry of Law and Parliamentary Affairs to seek approval
from the president. The new form, according to the ECP officials, includes 15
major amendments to previous one. “It requires the
candidates to submit details of their three years financial history, bank
loans, details of their property with their market price, foreign travels,
payment of agriculture tax along with several other details,” a senior
official of the ECP tells TNS. “The Chairman HEC
requested the CEC to write a letter to parliamentarians as they were not
cooperating with HEC for degree verification. Under the SC orders, the ECP is
bound to get their degrees verified,” he says, adding Section 3 of Article
278 of the Constitution of Pakistan clearly states it is the duty of the ECP
to guard against corrupt practices while Section 3 of Article 78 of The
Representation of the People’s Act, 1976 clarifies wrong information about
educational qualification, assets and liabilities comes under corrupt
practices. The ECP officials say the
Election Commission is committed to control corrupt practices in upcoming
elections. The commission is going to have meetings with representative of
FBR and the State Bank of Pakistan on Friday March 1 to discuss the
verification of financial and tax history of candidates for 2013 elections. “We also want to make
sure that those who indulged in corrupt practices in the past do not contest
the next election. Fake degree holders can be disqualified under Article
62-63 of Constitution,” says another ECP official. More than 2000 out of 9000
candidates who contested elections last time submitted fake degrees, it was
learnt. “Most of them would
contest in the upcoming elections as well. We have been trying since 2010
that parliamentarians submit their degrees to HEC for verification but
several of them are not ready to do so,” says an official of the HEC which
played an important role in bringing this issue back to life. He says the HEC
can verify the degrees of all parliaments within a few days provided they
submit all required documents to the HEC. “Some individual did
submit fake degrees but it does not mean we should start blaming politics for
corrupt practices,” says Suhail Warriach, senior political analyst. He says
that most of those who provided fake degrees have already been scrutinised by
the courts during last few years. “Many lawmakers had to leave parliament
over fake degrees. Let the law take its due course. No need to show haste,”
he says, adding that mainstream political parties fear the issue of fake
degrees can be used to postpone elections for a few months.
This is not going
to be a well-liked piece. I can only hope that it is not misunderstood —
regardless of the unpopular arguments I plan on raising. A few days ago, a leading
English newspaper carried an article penned by one of the senior members of
its editorial staff, Mr. Zarrar Khuhro. This article made the rounds on
Facebook and Twitter. It deserves publicity and all of you must read it —
but not because it says the right things. Only because most of the things it
suggests are fundamentally dangerous for a society — particularly a society
trying to fight extremism. The arguments made in the
said article are symptomatic of a mindset quickly becoming acceptable —
that abandoning constitutional safeguards is kosher when our liberties are
threatened. This viewpoint, rather bafflingly, is often voiced by the
ostensibly “liberal” section of the population in Pakistan. Now I do not
identify either as a liberal or a conservative since my positions vary but I
do not know of one strand of cogent liberalism that would find these
arguments acceptable. Unless, of course, you think Bush Jr and Rumsfeld are
liberals. Here are some of the
suggestions made by this allegedly liberal section: allow secret evidence in
trials of terrorists (if that means not confronting the accused with it, God
help us), suspend right of appeal if necessary (one strike and you are out),
special courts/tribunals (think abuse of judicial process), condone
“disappearance” of certain accused (detain, kill, we don’t care?) et
al. What underlies all of this? Another sweeping claim: “these people
deserve it.” I can think of one striking parallel to all of this:
Guantanamo Bay. John Yoo, the legal architect of Gitmo, would be very proud.
He clearly has an avid following in Pakistan and yet he does not get enough
credit. Somewhere in Texas, Bush Jr. too is grinning and saying, “told ya!”
Let’s get the obvious
objections out of the way first. No one supporting due process and fair trial
is condoning the actions of militant organisations like LeJ. Anyone killing
our citizens including minorities should be held accountable and given
exemplary punishment. But since when did we start deciding who among the
accused in a trial do or do not “deserve” constitutional protections of a
fair trial and due process? These protections do not depend on the enormity
of the crime but on the fact of the state being subject to the constitution.
Should criminals, apart from terrorists, who commit heinous crimes be denied
these protections too? I assure you some gut-wrenching crimes are committed
against children and women all over the world — should we make those people
disappear and be tortured? Constitutional protections
are not accorded because they are convenient. They are provided precisely
because a people decide that their rash impulses for “quick” justice will
need to be checked. They are written down precisely because the rhetoric of
difficult times should not be allowed to drown them. Now the irony is (and I
wonder if they even realise this) that this section of the Pakistani liberal
intelligentsia automatically loses the moral and legal justification to
condemn Gitmo or US drone strikes. Personally I think there are multiple
strong legal arguments for drone strikes and why “due process” will not
apply in a “theater of war” but these people are not citing those. Plus
even if they are trying to be assertive, they are being wishy-washy. Either
make a dangerous argument that fight against sectarian killings is somehow a
theater of war in which due process will not apply or do not throw in sugar
coated words like trials and special courts! In a war there are no
trials but for people treated as criminals under domestic law there are
constitutional protections. First decide what the argument is. Right now it
is quite frankly a regrettably hollow argument — neither here nor there.
This is without prejudice to fundamental objections that can be raised if you
define groups spreading sectarian hatred and violence as enemies in a theater
of war. But a lawyer could make that argument. And a good lawyer could make
that argument to make you pause and think, “Wait a minute.” No one in the
liberal intelligentsia so far has done that. And this confuses the debate and
hurts it. The next limb of this
discourse is even more problematic. It suggests that political wings of
terrorist organisations should be treated like terrorists themselves. Fine.
For a second, let’s buy that. Then what is your problem with Israel hitting
Hamas over and over? The Israeli government is making the same argument as
these liberals — no difference between Hamas and Hamas’s political wing.
In any case this argument runs into problems. If the ultimate aim is to win
hearts and minds and ensure rehabilitation of those who can be saved, why not
engage with political groups? TTP has no such political wing willing to
contest elections but some other extremist elements may do that. Now, fine you can say that
PML-N (as a matter of principle) should not cater to groups spreading
sectarian hatred but spare a thought for a political party that actually does
so in the bona fide belief that something can be salvaged from this. Call
that view naïve, maybe, but don’t equate a political wing of an extremist
organisation with a terrorist organisation. If you do that then you are
suggesting that no one should have negotiated with Sin Feinn (political wing
of militant IRA) or the political wing of the Basque separatist movement in
Spain. Hardly cogent and deeply problematic. Both those actions helped bring
peace. And peace is what the PML-N is striving for. It may fail and it may
get it wrong but it would be unfair to suggest that PML-N’s policy of
engagement with political wings of militant organisations is somehow to be
blamed for the terrorism itself. That is a separate fight and must be carried
on. And of course, Punjab government must do all it can to bring perpetrators
of violence to justice. But the PML-N effort has some force of history to
back it up. The actual reason for this
highly confused allegedly liberal discourse might be simple: frustration and
a genuine desire to see justice being done. And since the “deep state” is
often part of the problem than the solution, a lot of people are thus forced
to make arguments supporting detentions, extra-judicial killings (or willful
ignorance of them) or gagging other protections. But if the problem is law
enforcement and willingness to act, then a trial that makes a mockery of
justice will not solve the issue. Neither will extra judicial killings help.
Just because the state of Pakistan may have been party to illegal actions in
the past cannot and does not mean that we insist on making a mockery of the
legal process to get results we deem fit. By doing away with
constitutional protections, we threaten ourselves rather than terrorists or
our enemies. It is high time we stand by principles — they are a promise to
the citizens of this country and not merely nods of convenience. Whatever you
do, please do not look away. This is our fight and let’s fight by the
rules. I am pretty sure that your religion (regardless of which one you
follow) and this country’s constitution will tell you the same. |
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