Infallible men

When societies become fake the definitions of social traits and standards are redefined. The relative social traits of good and bad, honest and corrupt, and moral and amoral are further confused. This social confusion enlarges the breathing space for male dominance. Women erring in such a society are unleashed with ‘divine’ punishment whereas men become infallible. Hareem Shah is that woman among those infallible men. In this thaw of lamentation, we are only focusing on the twin TikTok girls of fame, and blindfolded by male dominance, we have no eyes over the TikTok boys of shame. Hareem is a theatrical portrayal of our socio-moral belief system that has sadistically eroded, and shows a glimpse into our society’s underworld.

How Hareem got access to the most sensitive offices of the country and was allowed to trespass in those parts are questions that still remain for the men in authority to answer. How influential did she turn out to be to sit on the most powerful and coveted seat of this country? Moreover, how dangerous has she become to threaten the seemingly powerful people? Does she have more material to make an explosion or is this only a matter of time and tide? Again, her leaked videos and calls with the elected representatives raise more serious concerns. All these questions cannot be answered in a society where multiple standards of socio-moral justices exist.

It was her poor and wretched father who was, perhaps as conspiracy theory has it, made to appear with a confessional video which was a discourse in cursing the ills his daughter had committed and a gesture of ostracising her. For the infallible men, this encapsulates the panacea for the Hareem Shah malady and a measure to settle down the dust. But, this is justice half done. Those infallible men must realise they too have fallen down badly and to rise back, they need to stand up with their confessions too. Their confessional statements will be different than what Hareem’s father presented as these men hold the sacred trust of the people — they hold public offices. They are in the divine public service of politics and are bound by many different state trusts. Their confessional statements will mean something and will bear upon something on our socio-political society. Will they conjure an apology is an expectation we must never hold of them as this is a habit we are not accustomed to and something alien to our socio-political DNA. If juxtaposed with Clinton’s quantum of crime, our infallible men being impeached would have been sent to the gallows under the American Laws of Impeachment.

Confessions require courage as on one end we are accepting the crimes we committed and simultaneously, though clandestinely, setting a good example in our society. This value setting does not happen overnight. Scanning our history of politics since Partition, we end up with the realisation that politics for us has never meant anything social. Society and politics have always been poles apart. As a result, politics never rooted in the society and has thus never been influenced by social norms, values and standards. It has been an attempt to acquire power and prestige alone. This dwindled our political grace and gave us a politically illiterate society.

Amid such brouhaha, Hareem Shah is not supposed to be bulldozed with all the blame. In a just society, she is only one part of the social crime and the criminals on the other part are equally liable for the loads of the blames. But there are two problems. Firstly, ours is not a just but a male dominated society, and secondly the people on the other side are the Infallible Men.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2020.

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