Path to salvation

[Mairaj Shar]

Path to salvation

There is one redeeming feature about violence: it takes your mind off your troubles -- it makes you forget the cost of living. And, because violence rules to a great extent in the poor man's domicile, the well heeled are by and large unaffected. Of course, if it gets too close, they can up and leave. History is full of ignominious getaways by the rich and famous. Our summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, whose identities are well known, shrink from taking risks. They not only live in bunkers but take it along when they move; but what of the others? How, then, is society reacting to the terror unleashed by homegrown terrorists?

The millions who live and eek out a living in the rural areas and their brethren, the great Unwashed, the urban poor, have no fear of the terrorist. Why should they? What do they have to lose? Their annals have remained unchanged -- from poverty to poverty for millennia. The last three generations have altered nothing. Death stalks them all their lives. And whether it comes upon them violently, or in the lingering form of disease ("Death is a poor man's best physician") and starvation, it scarcely matters. A sigh or two and a shrug of the shoulders is about as much that escapes them when told of the death toll in the latest blast. The good thing about being poor is that it takes up all your time, it leaves little for fear.

However, for the upper and middle classes and the not-so-impoverished city-dwellers the fear factor is important. They have fewer things to desire, many things to fear and more time to worry. Hence, fear is constant, gnawing and pervasive. And as it happens, it is they, a mite in the 170 million, that are the driving force in our present democracy.

How, then, do they wish their leaders to deal with this phenomenon? Essentially, they have no idea; although suggestions abound, stretching from the mad to the mundane--from nuking the terrorist badlands to better policing. However, when it comes to apportioning blame they are united. They place it squarely on the incumbent regime, rarely its predecessor and almost never beyond that; because the past in Pakistan is considered another country where things are done differently. It has little to do with the present and nothing at all with the future. Thus, Mr Zardari must carry the can for all the ills of contemporary society. And on the rare occasions that he escapes the blame it is placed squarely on the Americans and the Indians.

Mahathir Mohammed once said of his middle classes: "They never choose people who are qualified and capable in terms of calibre and character. They choose, instead, those who offer them money gifts or other things." He may as well have been speaking about Pakistan's chattering classes. "Corruption is not an issue. Everybody is corrupt. Forget the NRO. What we want is jobs, electricity and a liveable wage," said a luminary of the salaried middle class. He was not prepared to accept that corruption and job creation are mutually exclusive. Or that water, electricity or heath facilities are in a deplorable condition because a regime that is consumed by corruption cannot deliver. In fact, what modern societies are taught to accept as self-evident truths is viewed here as humdrum nonsense.

A senior politician handling education in Pakistan recited reams of statistics about the number of ghost schools and nonexistent teachers and the billions wasted without the faintest clue how this pernicious practice could be eliminated. Irked at being continuously pressed to offer a remedy, he finally gave up, saying, "Don't you understand, corruption is innate to us, it is in our blood." In other words, "get real." The idea that corruption is second nature to man, and that anyone who questions the essential rightness of this proposition is foolish, is surely unacceptable. If only for this reason, the Supreme Court must decide that a law granting thieves exemption from punishment is intolerable.

One predecessor of the politician in question, who was also present on the occasion, related why he had given up a similar appointment in disgust. Staying on and fighting to change what he claimed to abhor never crossed his mind. He preferred a transfer to another ministry, where he found corruption no less endemic. It occurred to onlookers then, as they glanced at some notorious types present in the room, that most of this ilk avidly discuss the corrupt exploits of others all night and in the morning get up and indulge in it themselves.

To combat terrorism and the other ills that confront society we need to reform, but it is not only the police and the intelligence apparatus that need reform but also our attitudes, and even that may not be enough. Because all reform, without a moral one, will prove unavailing.

Some may argue that reform which is basically a correction of abuses is not enough; nor can it be undertaken by those who are in the first place responsible for the abuses, and hence what we need is not reform but a revolution. And, indeed, if that is what is required and what the people want, why not? No reform, moral or intellectual, ever came from the upper class of society. But lest some are wary of calls for reform, what to say of a revolution, they should know that the absence of one will beget the other.

Near the United Nations headquarters in New York there was a plaque which had these words etched in stone:

"Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement its nothingness, toil its desolation. And so keep alive the incentive to push on further, that it is pain in our soul that drives us beyond ourselves… Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward -- your destiny are HERE and NOW."