Winners and losers of ‘Pakistani Spring’

One good way to determine how calm and stress-less a society is to know how much music (music and not noise) is being heard by how many people. For a society to transform and become a society that is no more shackled but open, ‘hearing good music’ must play its due role as ‘music is for the soul, the better the music is the better the thinking will be’. But in Pakistan, politics has not spared even the music and for a society that wants to be free, liberalise and be part of a greater globalised world, Maulanna aa raha haie (Maulana is coming), the JUI-F political slogging song hardly sounds music to the ears. One can only laugh at how the religio-political parties are trying to do anything and everything to be in step with the ongoing political parade of other parties. Can’t the religious parties have a specific identity of their own? How is then this current political contest shaping up? Is it sounding like music to our ears or is it annoying and frustrating us?

Imran Khan’s reformist government, despite committing many mistakes, continues to create new winners and losers in Pakistani politics. It is pushing the Pakistani politics to the wall and is not only overturning well-established relationships but creating the foundations for the buildup of the new ones. All this is not easy as we are not a very homogeneous population and unfortunately sub-nationalism in the society is more distinct and pronounced then nationalism and when most political leaders and actors and their patronised and privileged sideliners watch their privileges being eroded and status declined, they naturally hit back hard at this government. So, it is not just the discredit of its own committed mistakes but it is the overall accumulated discredit of being a reformist government which is keeping the PTI in the cross hairs of many political target shooters. So, what kind of shape can our society take if true political reforms are allowed to take root?

Politics of ‘patronage networking’ will gradually decline and people will begin to realise that they can rely for their well-being and economic dependence more on the state than the political families with whom they have remained traditionally hooked. The more ‘fake social and political status’ of these families is exposed and undermined the more the common man will look up to the state. This all will be time consuming; and in a post-pandemic environment in which we live, the change will be slower, tougher and difficult to execute.

Reforms ignite backlash and this government will have to execute strategic patience to bear and respond positively to the ‘reactionist onslaught’. Many reactionists are being left to lick their wounds and these days are ‘wondering loudly’ as to how they can compete in Pakistan that is looking up to merit and trying hard to become less and less corrupt. When costs and causalities mount, the enemy eventually surrenders. In the meantime, opposition will cook up anything and everything to throw at the government which is stealing away their well-organised political circus that they ran in this country for a very long time.

What I wrote in the beginning will stand true when life’s stresses and anxieties will stand relieved through a political process initiated by a ‘progressive government’. Only then will people truly listen to the music that will bring calmness and politeness in a society that is in dire need of any dose to cure its intolerance. Eventually we may not have to listen to a song like Maulana ja raha haiee (Maulana is going) but actually witness the happening of this richly deserved social change right before our eyes.

The biggest responsibility of the state is to bring back the madrassas to the mainstream education; and to pull out the children doing child labour on our roads and streets and put them in the state-funded education institutions. This cannot happen in a couple of years or during the current government’s tenure.

But this government must make a roadmap and set its objective of lifting all our children who are out of schools from the streets and putting them in state-funded education institutions in a given timeframe of 5 to 6 years. Are we as a nation focused on this very important measure to rebuild our next generations and ready to give some sacrifices? I think majority of people despite the sharp rise in the prices of daily commodities and despite the frustrations that such raise in prices is bringing in are still standing up with the Imran Khan government. The reason for this is plain and simple — If Imran Khan fails, we would perforce be looking back to the reinstatement of the old political order. How many of us want that?

I think many people in this country understand that not all the problems are government-created as there are significant number of problems that are being ‘politically created’ by politics of politicians that are not being accommodated. Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman is one such politician. Saudi Arabia is a brotherly country that is undertaking huge social and political reforms: cinemas have opened up, women are allowed to drive, and the religious police have been marginalised. If King Salman of Saudi Arabia can tell his Majlis-e-Shura that “there is no room for extremists who oppose modernisation and exploit our tolerant religion to achieve their goals” and follow this up as a state policy then it is time that Pakistan must also boldly come forward to quash all ‘stoppers and blockers’ of modernisation process in this country.

Our country is already undergoing a potentially destabilising period of transition. The killing of the 11 coal miners in the Mach area of Balochistan is a clear reminder in how much of the work under the national action plan still remains pending and needs to be executed. As I write the victims of the Mach killing have not yet been buried. I can understand the pain and agony of the mourning families and can also understand the frustrations of the Hazara community but those who are dead will not come back and their burial should not be linked with the visit of the Prime Minister to Quetta. The Prime Minister must pay a condolence visit but if a Prime Minister’s visit once becomes a condition for discontinuity of any kind of protest then it will become a new norm and a political precedence for future protesters to quote and demand Prime Minister’s presence before ending any kind of protests.

Prime Minister Imran Khan represents a government that marks the end of a political order that has governed Pakistan for over seven decades. I even call it ‘Pakistani Spring’ in which some are relishing and others are absolutely distraught but deep inside every Pakistani knows that we do need a change. Doing this will require social, economic and political reforms but above all sacrifices by people who are witnessing this and being part of this spring.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2021.

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