Wednesday, March 24, 2010
What is there to celebrate?
Roedad Khan
Every year, we commemorate March 23 in remembrance of ‘The Pakistan Resolution’ passed in the historic city of Lahore. Memories come back to me like shards of glass. I was in Lahore, the city of my dreams, on that memorable day. Yeast was in the air. The idea of Pakistan was about to be born.
A day earlier, on March 22, 1940, Mr Jinnah had arrived in Lahore by the Frontier Mail to preside over the Muslim League meeting. When he entered the packed pandal, he faced a sea of humanity – all his admirers who had converged on Lahore to hear what he had to say. The Nawab of Mamdot, Chairman of the Reception Committee, presented Mr Jinnah to the vast multitude. It was Jinnah’s largest audience, his greatest performance to-date. On that day, the Muslim League led by Mr Jinnah declared its support for the idea of Pakistan. His Lahore address lowered the final curtain on any prospects for a single united India. It was a ringing repudiation of Sikander Hayat’s Unionist Party’s basic platform of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh co-existence. That is why generations of Pakistanis will always remember March 23 with profound reverence and respect. Seven years later, on August 14, 1947, thanks to the iron will and determination of Mr Jinnah, I was proud citizen of a sovereign, independent country – a country I could live for and die for.
As he left the constitutional convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by an admirer, “Dr Franklin what have you given us”. Franklin turned to the questioner and replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it”. Not too long ago, we too possessed a great country earned for us by the sweat of the brow and iron will of one person. Where giants walked, midgets pose now. Our rulers, both elected and un-elected, have done to Pakistan what the successors of Lenin did to the Soviet Union. “Lenin founded our State”, Stalin said, after a stormy session with Marshal Zhukov.
The German army was at the gate of Moscow. “And we have …it up”. This is exactly what we have done to Jinnah’s Pakistan. Today it is neither sovereign, nor independent, nor democratic. Today it is not just a “rentier state”, not just a client state. It is a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a corrupt, power-hungry junta running a puppet government set up by Washington. The dream has morphed into a nightmare.
Sixty two years after independence, are we really free? Are the people masters in their own house? The kind of Pakistan we have today has lost its manhood and is a ghost of its former self. Our entire political system has been pulled into a black hole caused by periodic army intervention and prolonged army rule. Today if Pakistan were to look into a mirror, it won’t recognise itself. The contrast between Pakistan in 1947 – idealistic, democratic, progressive, optimistic, and Pakistan today – leaderless, rudderless, violent, besieged, corrupt, uncertain about its future – could not be sharper or more disheartening. If you want to know how a people can survive despite their government, or leaders, well, visit Pakistan.
What is there to celebrate? There is no reason to celebrate! But there are myriad reasons to reflect. We lost half the country in a suicidal civil war in 1971. Like the Bourbons of France we have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Today Pakistan is dangerously at war with itself once again. The federation is united only by a ‘rope of sand’. Sixty two years after independence, we have a disjointed, dysfunctional, lopsided, hybrid, artificial, political system – a non-sovereign rubber stamp parliament, a weak and ineffective prime minister, appointed by a powerful accidental president.
This is an eerie period, the heart of the nation appears to stop beating, while its body remains suspended in a void. What has become of the nation’s core institutions? The militarised state has destroyed the foundations of all our political institutions. The army has been enthroned as the new elite. The level of fawning and jockeying to be merely noticed and smiled upon by any pretender in uniform speaks of a nation that is loudly pleading to be crushed underfoot.
The independence of Pakistan is a myth. By succumbing to American pressure, we managed to secure a temporary reprieve. But at what price? Everyday American aircraft violate our airspace, and bomb our villages. In 2009 alone, they killed 667 innocent men, women and children with impunity. No questions asked. No protest. No remorse. Today Pakistan is splattered with American fortresses, seriously compromising our internal and external sovereignty. American security personnel stationed on our soil move in and out of the country without any let or hindrance. Pakistan has become a launching pad for military operations against neighbouring Muslim countries. We have been drawn into somebody else’s war without understanding its true dimension or ultimate objectives. Nuclear Pakistan has been turned into an ‘American lackey’, currently engaged in a proxy war against its own people.
Parliament is one of the chief instruments of our democracy. Today, it is cowed, timid, a virtual paralytic, over-paid and under-employed. Parliamentary membership is the key to material success, a passport and a license to loot and plunder. Who says it is a check on the arbitrariness of the executive? Nobody takes it seriously. Today it is the weakest of the three pillars of state. It has suffered a steady diminution of power and prestige. Its image is tarnished and has been turned into a fig-leaf for unconstitutional and illegal practices.
To no nation has fate been more malignant than to Pakistan. With few exceptions, Pakistan has long been saddled with poor, even malevolent, leadership: predatory kleptocrats, military dictators, political illiterates and carpet-baggers. With all her shortcomings, Benazir Bhutto had undoubted leadership qualities – charisma, courage, political acumen and articulation. After her tragic assassination, Mr Zardari’s sudden ascension to the presidency caused panic among the people. His record since then hasn’t exactly been an exercise in the glories of Pakistan’s democracy.
To settle back into your cold-hearted acceptance of the status quo is not an option. The present leadership is taking Pakistan to a perilous place. The course they are on leads downhill. This is a delicate time, full of trepidation. Today it is a political and moral imperative for all patriotic Pakistanis to fight for our core values, to resist foreign intervention in our internal affairs and to destroy the roots of evil that afflicts Pakistan. That is the best way to celebrate March 23.
“Every country has its own constitution”, one Russian is alleged to have remarked in the 19th century. “Ours is absolutism moderated by occasional assassination”. The situation is not so very different in Pakistan. In democracies, constitutional amendments are especially solemn moments; in Pakistan they are easier than changing the traffic regulations. After 62 years, a parliamentary committee is busy rewriting the Constitution of Pakistan! If you want to know what happens when constitution, the fundamental law of the land, is periodically decimated, disfigured, defiled with impunity and treated with contempt, well – visit Pakistan.
The recent spontaneous demonstrations and outpouring of anger witnessed in and around Islamabad are ominous. With such ripples do tidal waves begin? Who will tap the anger, the frustration and the resentment among millions of our people? Both military dictatorship and corrupt, fraudulent democracy, have failed them. The country is impoverished and humiliated. Democratic forms remain, but democracy itself is in effect dead or dying.
The writer is a former federal secretary.
Email:
roedad@comsats.net.pk