In what could be the most insightful dialogue in the history of American television, The Wire’s character Omar Little (an African-American man charged with murder and robbing drug dealers) replies to Maurice Levy’s (an influential white lawyer representing a drug cartel and its more legal offshoots) accusations of amorality by retorting, “I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. It’s all in the game though, right?”
Omar Little and Maurice Levy represent the two poles of the same socio-political paradigm. The Wire hinges on this very ‘intertextuality’ of modern urban violence and the accompanying narratives of amorality, often rendered invisible in mainstream analysis. It implicates indices of capital in the configurations of urban space and the ensuing turbulence. When ordinary thugs and respectable professionals all live off the same drug money; when the prosperity of the high-rises depends on the rottenness of the ghettos; when death and addiction on the street corners means heftier bank accounts for politicians and businessmen alike, nothing is quite sacred and no one can really be considered to be outside the sphere of amorality.
It is in much the same vein that questions of violence and amorality trouble contemporary urban Pakistan and specifically its demented heart that is Karachi. In the spate of public outrage against the MQM’s politics of ‘gangs’ and ‘body bags’ since the elections, these questions become ever more pertinent. What the discourse has seemingly lacked though is a pinch of historicity and the attempt to locate Karachi’s woes in the framework of capitalist modernity that The Wire provides so well for Baltimore.
That the MQM boasts a bloody, gruesome track record is a thing of lore. Context is nonetheless essential to unpack this legacy. The MQM’s genesis lay in the need felt by a section of the middle class to defend its turf against ‘emerging powers’ (primarily Pakhtuns) since the 1960s. Counter-intuitively, from the very beginning the MQM was not about ethnic or identity politics – but a reactionary response to these. It downplayed the genuine demands for recognition of ethno-linguistic diversity and provincial autonomy in favour of a centrist outlook.
Whereas its founders were not feudals or industrialists, their position as the ‘salariat’ meant a strong preference for maintaining the status quo. Bhutto’s introduction of the quota system to improve representation of ‘marginalised’ ethnicities was anathema to them – hence calls for merit-based selection.
At the time that the APMSO was created at the Karachi University in 1978, political ferment was rife. Resistance against the new martial law regime was pervasive. Student unions were springing up left, right and centre; labour was up in arms, and progressive movements of all shades were gathering strength. Although there is disagreement amongst various commentators regarding the role of the military establishment in the creation of the MQM itself, but it is perhaps fair to say that due to its composition and aims, the party did eventually play into the hands of the state.
Despite lack of widespread support even amongst the Mohajir community, the MQM was able to solidify its hold of Karachi at the mohalla level. It was able to counter rival student movements and even wipe them out entirely. Despite its claims to be a pro-poor party, it was able to check any progressive movement of the poor developing in Karachi, and instead went on to wholeheartedly support martial law regimes.
But this is where the rhetoric of the ‘exceptional’ evil of the MQM and Altaf Hussain becomes problematic. The precise steps through which a group of middle-class university graduates became implicated in the urban land mafia and bhatta system would make for a fascinating study. Yet the mythical quality surrounding the discourse on the MQM going rogue needs to be cut down to size. Hardly an aberration, the MQM’s ‘rogue’ face can be easily located in the normative operation of global capital and its local varieties.
For a city facing an ever-increasing internal migration – even as its industries and businesses are hit by recession or move to more ‘profitable’ locations – where the competition for scarce resources implies an inevitable turn to street power in order to survive, where progressive organisations are brutally smashed but weapons and drugs pour in in abundance, the breakdown of all semblance of sanity is hardly astonishing.
The MQM may have been to contemporary Karachi what Marlo Steinfield’s no holds barred gang was to Baltimore in The Wire, yet this ‘space’ could not exist but through the exigencies of capital and state institutions themselves.
In his book titled ‘Violence’, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek tackles the subject in intricate detail. Physical or subjective violence, he explains, is but one form of violence, albeit the most easily acknowledged. Attributable to a specific subject and therefore easily delimited, this kind of violence solicits the most righteous indignation. This is in stark contrast to ‘objective violence’.
In both its ‘systemic’ and ‘symbolic’ forms, objective violence is no longer imputable to concrete individuals and their evil intentions, but is ‘purely objective, systemic, and anonymous’. It is inherent in the unequal urban development fostered by capitalism, in the impersonal terror of bureaucratic institutions like the police and the military, and in the vocabulary, speech and grammar that shape our world. We choose to speak of certain things while remaining silent on others.
By operating at the level of ‘pure abstraction’, objective violence becomes omnipotent and at the same time renders itself invisible. As the ultimate mimesis of the Divine, it is everywhere and yet nowhere.
In a city as heterogeneous and as economically central as Karachi, the state’s interest in keeping things in the ‘right kind of ferment’ cannot be emphasised enough. The possibility of the rise of a grassroots political movement involving the largest concentration of the proletariat present anywhere in the country would have hung like a noose around the neck of the establishment. To counter that possibility, fanning the flames of ethnic violence is quite acceptable, even if it spirals out of control and overtly begins to hurt businesses and other capitalist endeavours. The rational response to such an eventuality is to pick an obvious scapegoat, point out its subjective and therefore easily visible violence, and decry it as ‘exceptionally evil’ and solely responsible for urban unrest.
Dr Mohammad Waseem in his piece ‘Mohajirs in Pakistan: A Case of Nativisation of Migrants’ explains that it was not till arms and ammunition began to arrive in Karachi that things really took a horrific turn. Lack of resources and the fight for economic and social survival meant hostilities brewed. Accessibility of weapons meant bloodletting became the norm.
While all governments led ‘clean-up operations’ in Karachi, no one dared put an end to the arms trade, let alone punish those making profit off it. The reason, Dr Waseem explains, was simple. Too many of the arms dealers were influential businessmen and well linked with nearly all political parties. Cracking down on criminalised street gangs is one thing but going after the big fish, who are well entrenched in the ‘system’, is totally another.
The real questions about Karachi then are not about the monstrosity of the MQM or its eccentric leadership, but the economic processes that give birth to monsters. Even the MQM’s exit from the scene would not solve much – when the conditions are ripe, another group will fill that place. There is an urgent need to move beyond what, in Zizek’s words, are ‘knee-jerk reactions’ to subjective violence, and begin to counter the essence of the disease: systemic and symbolic violence perpetuated by capitalism that creates the anonymous misery which eventually leads to an outburst of urban strife.
There is also a lesson of caution here for new political forces in Karachi like the PTI. Smug in its ‘at least we don’t use guns’ stance, the PTI appears to be ignoring a historic truth – that in the absence of a solid critique of the system from below, simply co-opting revolutionary slogans lands one in the same quagmire as those who came before. In this case, it would be the fate of eventually supporting everything you claimed to be up against, and using any means possible to maintain power when people realise that the change you promised was but a pipe dream.
Twitter: @DissentingMuse

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