KARACHI: For weeks, massive signboards have dotted Karachi asking the rhetorical question, “Do you want Taliban’s Pakistan or the Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan?” The political leadership of the city has been chanting this question on thousands of loudspeakers. In response, the thundering roar of their supporters provides the appropriate response. The Taliban are a lot less subtle but no less persuasive and do not wait for public approbation to take us where they want us to be taken. Not much intelligence required to answer either side. No Skyfall there!
At the inaugural session of the sixth Saarc Speakers’ Conference in Islamabad, according to a news report, “a severe protest and threat to walk out by Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Muhammed Iqbal worked and in the last moments, the management had to display the portrait of Quaid-i-Azam over the already fixed portraits of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto in the central reception hall of the Aiwan-e-Sadr”.
It is an interesting story. On being asked why the founder of the nation’s portrait was not up on the wall above the others, “the members of the management were surprised over the question. Rana Iqbal questioned, ‘Why are you looking at my face, tell me where is the Quaid-e-Azam?’” Eventually, Mr Jinnah was found appropriately relegated to behind the dais and was hauled up a ladder to be hung on a nail battered in for the act. These were the representatives of Pakistan’s provincial and national assemblies and Jinnah’s people, some of whom the question above is to be asked. The event was to commemorate the progress each of the Saarc nations had made with regard to their respective legacies! Skyfall there!
For 50 of our 65 odd years, the military has been the overt or covert omnipotent arbiter of the nation’s fate, very ably assisted by its created quislings and a pliant judiciary, in taking us down the path to the abyss we at present are in. The bakras here never really have had much chance, other than to publicly bleat in assent to the question or situation or sword of the day. The realisation that some form of non-Arab, non- fundamentalist, purely human-freedom Spring is trying to emerge from the debris that is left of the Quaid’s Pakistan is anathema to those who control the country. And the Empire will strike back as it desperately is across the Middle East and the remaining despotic potentate countries that have brought Islam to the brink.
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, perhaps, is thus the best suited to answer the other two rhetorical ‘fundamental questions’ he has asked: “One, are we promoting the rule of law and the Constitution?” And, “Two, are we strengthening or weakening the institutions?”
Let there be Skyfall. Mr Jinnah has had only two values over the years and, perhaps, needs to be buried and forgotten. One, his propaganda value for the bakras — General Ziaul Haq being one of the best blenders of Jinnah and Salafism — by those who claim his shredded mantle. And, two, for his frowning face that graces progressive larger denomination, lesser intrinsic value, notes used for the betterment, material well-being and sartorial upkeep of our leaders and their families. Or, can the bakras prevent the sky from falling yet again?
Dr Mervyn Hosein
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2012.
