Dissent is patriotism

Pakistan is brimming with paradox. It lauds the protests in India against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) but imprisons its own peaceful protesters. It considers those who subvert the Constitution as patriots while calling those who demand its implementation traitors. It gives restrictions on constitutional rights more weight than the rights themselves.

As a student of the Constitution, I have watched how the state has allowed the “reasonable restrictions” on fundamental rights permitted in the Constitution to swallow the rights whole. Under such an in interpretation of rights, only a charade of freedom can exist. It is this interpretation of the Constitution that has allowed for laws born of colonialism to still exist in our legal system. Laws like sedition and emergency powers were spawned from a system built on the foundations of oppressing local people.

Within this charade of freedom, free speech is understood by the State of Pakistan as a parody of itself. Allowing criticism of politicians but keeping every other epicenter of power off limits.

The freedom to criticise politicians envelops us in a false sense of security regarding free speech. It has sometimes made people feel like we have too much of it; confusing them when liberals raise the alarm that the right is being curtailed. After all, if you turn on the news and watch politicians being burned at the stake every day, you can be forgiven thinking that Pakistan cannot possibly have a free speech problem. But free speech does not mean the freedom to criticise one segment of power, it means the freedom to criticise all forms of power.

This is what protesters in Islamabad were doing when they were arrested. They were peacefully demanding their constitutional rights. Just how intolerant our society has grown to those who speak truth to power is exemplified by a district judge who, while hearing one of these cases, compared the actions of the protesters to terrorism.

Such intolerance has become the lot of every peaceful protester in Pakistan who tries to challenge the status quo. Women participating in the Aurat March, Pashtuns asking for the accountability of Rao Anwar, students demanding the restoration of unions, have all been branded pariahs by the state and the society. They are said to be unpatriotic, but I believe they are the most patriotic citizens we have.

Because at the heart of the demands of these citizens is the desire to see the promise of the Constitution fulfilled. They want only what is owed to them — the elimination of discrimination, the respect for human dignity, a nation based on equality and equity. To demand these rights in a peaceful way can never be unpatriotic. For then the ideals of justice would be unpatriotic.

Political dissent, by definition, is critical of the status quo. So, if that is what we believe to be sedition then our country has adopted a definition of free speech that has no relationship to what that freedom is actually supposed to mean.

And while I do not think that those who are organising and participating in these protests are suffering from any lack of resolve, I do understand that nights in jail, chants of treachery, and charges of sedition are likely to make even the most resolute wonder if it is worth it all.

If they ever feel their resolve wavering, they can find comfort in the historic company they find themselves in.

They abide by the same values that have made peaceful protests such a symbol of hope and justice throughout history. From Martin Luther King’s march on Selma, Jinnah’s crusade for independence and Gandhi’s Salt March — if these examples are indicative of anything — say that these protesters are on the right side of history.

Our state needs to understand that these protests are not against Pakistan. They are protests against the privileged few who have usurped for themselves the power to interpret how much freedom is to be granted to the people of this country. Such privileged groups never give up their privilege by themselves. Those protesting throughout the country recognise that. It is time we did as well.

To jail and label as terrorists our citizens who are peacefully asking for their constitutional rights is a shameful display of our lack of commitment to freedom. As this injustice grows, the silence of our Prime Minister is the most deafening. There is no justification for this silence. He must support the cause of justice. He must stand against intolerance and bigotry. He must implement a constitutional system where rights are more powerful than their restrictions.

Those protesting today in Pakistan are patriots of justice, calm with the reassurance that they seek to create a better country.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2020.

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