Aagay tum peechhay hum

The greatest challenge for any political system is to convert a bad social order into a good political order; and in Pakistan the challenge becomes much difficult as the existing social order is not order but a ‘disorderly order’ which is piling up public disappointments and frustrations and hurting society’s self-respect and esteem. Our society’s great disruption needs treatment by the state as no society re-norms, reforms and corrects itself automatically. When disordered social order of other societies can change why can’t ours?

The socially disordered nations changed not when their institutions changed but when an essential change took place in the values that they believed in and how they carried and implemented those values in their daily lives. For them it was never the desk that was important but the person who sat behind the desk. That is why countries and institutions that invested in huge infrastructures and physical capital and did nothing to invest in human capital and social capital stayed behind.

When traditional rules are replaced by rational and reasonable rules which are legislated and implemented by the states like in France, US and Britain, political and social reforms take place. Besides imparting education, teaching institutions and universities perform the most important task of character building. And in order to make students true professionals in their fields the teachers inculcate in them honesty, fair speech, fearlessness, cleanliness, punctuality and politeness. However, the story of teachers in countries like Pakistan is entirely different. The state neglects these ‘social capital builders’ and ‘value creators’, and thus the re-building of its social capital.

The standard of teaching in our country has hit the rock bottom because the bar of teacher’s standard of qualification and competence is lying on the floor. Some of the PhDs employed in the universities can’t converse in English or even write a few coherent paragraphs in the language on a given subject. My resentment is not towards these ‘PhD teachers’ because their enrollment in universities is possible only when the universities lower their own standards of recruitment. At universities as a declared specialist of a subject you profess and not teach but if PhDs profess like teachers in schools what contribution will they make to the breed of students whose next destination is the corporate world or the business community where it would take a sound character to survive and compete? Who is at fault?

By employing a brigade of inefficient and incompetent PhDs just to boast about a big number of them on their faculty, all that these universities are doing is winning the daily battles but losing the ultimate war — a nationwide war that we must fight to invest in our next generation and re-norm and rebuild this country. Entrusted with under par teachers the prime time that students spend in most universities is below quality as much as the prime time that some of them waste by watching pseudo political intellectuals debating on the subject of ‘political nothingness’ every evening at their homes day after day, week after week for the entire year. Poor quality and time wasting are something one would never associate with Japanese. What can we learn from them?

‘Meiji Restoration’ in 1868 stamped out the banditry that took place in feudal Japan and brought Japan under a single centralised state by implementing the Aristotelian conversion of its social order into a political order. Japan invested in ‘value creation’. Their custom of ‘lifetime employment’ explains the difference of their political approach. At a time when the communist world was forcing people to ‘labour for the cause of world socialism’ Japan was persuading people to remain loyal to their company, nation and the emperor. Loyalty became a cardinal value and virtue that today no other nation demonstrates more vigorously than the Japanese.

Why can’t political order replace social order in countries like Pakistan? We never fulfilled the three conditions that many renowned sociologists believe are essential for this conversion. These are: firstly, rules and norms must be set through legislation; secondly, a peaceful and enabling environment is created for business and market exchange; and thirdly and most importantly, it always takes a leadership that is not only charismatic but demonstrates courage, is daring in political creativity and anchors statesmanship.

Another important aspect of this conversion was that in US, Japan, UK, Germany, France and host of other countries, religion stopped legitimising the political rule. I am afraid no reformation can take place in our country as long as the authority of religion is in conflict with the authority of state. Some people in this country still think that the problem of moral decline, social disruption and disorder can be resolved by large-scale return to religious orthodoxy. Not many people will disagree with the American scholar Francis Fukuyama’s assertion that “modern societies are so culturally diverse that it is not clear whose version of orthodoxy will prevail” and also that “a conservative religious revival may in fact accelerate the movement towards fragmentation of a society”. It is in this context that the political “bowing down” and “bending down” of our big political parties in front of Maulana Fazlur Rehman is democracy’s great tragedy.

The leader of the PML-N has already showed us his preference to become Ameer-ul Mumenieen and now the recently appointed spokesperson of his party compared him with Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran — this is scary. In Pakistan there is still an ongoing contestation between the holders of religious authority and a growing up generation Y and generation Z who are the followers of greater individualism and secular trends. The baby boomers like Maulana Fazl who never considered retiring are still groping to find political relevance. The importance being given to him now by the so-called democratic parties is an insult to their liberal and tolerant political agendas.

The Maulana continues to get in the way of the state in how the state wants to run the education system and also smudges society’s preference in understanding the nature of its identity. He is acceptable to “the crown bearers of our democracy”, the two major political parties of this country, those that sell liberal, political and civic political agenda to the people yet are willing to work under his authority.

Sadly, as long as these political parties continue to look up to Maulana Fazl and his religious authority to legitimise their political relevance and political future there is least likelihood that Pakistan will never see the transition from social to political order.

People like the Maulana will continue to set and impose their own rules and blackmail state institutions. The disgruntled political parties may utilise Maulan’s services by implementing the political strategy of “aagay tum peechhay hum” (you lead we follow) only to gain some short-term political rewards. Incidentally, for political suitability Maryam Nawaz twisted “aagay tum peechhay hum” to “aagay hum peechhay tum”. She recently commented that PM Nawaz Sharif was in front and the military was at the back of Operation Zarb-e-Azb and Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad. I wish she could compare the picture of COAS with the children of Col Shaheed Mujeeb-ur-Rehman making rounds on social media with her father’s pictures with his sons in London. Only then will she get to know what it takes to be “in front” at any battlefront.

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

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