Arm the armless

PM’s favourite topic includes ensuring that there is just enough moral policing that citizens don’t get led astray

Havoc has been wreaking, people are dying. Chaos is rampant in the streets. All it takes for an angry mob to kill someone is a mere allegation. The realisation that Pakistan is a theocracy doesn’t do any favours either. Downfall is not near; downfall is already here. The country has been living through it since years. Things are only bound to get worse from this stage on. Unless, the state machinery takes rigorous steps to curb such arbitrariness, more people will die in the name of false accusations.

The judiciary tends to take suo motu notices on various issues, their favourite being building demolition and depriving citizens of shelter. Similarly, the Prime Minister’s favourite topic includes ensuring that there is just enough moral policing that the naïve citizens don’t get led astray due to ‘western’ media. Such is the concern of our beloved Prime Minister that he has been operating various committees in the name of religion and with great fervour, the Prime Minister has gone a step ahead and instructed universities to research the ‘disastrous’ effects that the west has in our lives. Yet, what the Prime Minister and his fellows have miserably failed to dilate upon is the ever-increasing radicalisation in the country.

While the legal practitioners are busy beating women up in courts and the judges are busy with contempt proceedings against each other, who do the aggrieved turn to for justice? Months have passed, the trial of Noor Mukadam’s killer continues. Poverty is so widespread that the victim’s families settle with blood money. Justice was sold by the killers of Nazim Jokhio who roam free and ironically enjoy just as much following as they did before.

Every now and then, the courts of the country pass detailed judgements, at times ranging above 100 pages. Every morning at 8:30am, lawyers and judges race to the courts and ‘legal’ points are debated with extensive legalese. But to what avail? The apex court spends years addressing the authorities for implementation of its own judgements. Thousands of contempt proceedings are initiated and years go by until they are disposed of. But on the ground, nothing changes. Presently, the entire system has blinkers on and is trotting with no destination in sight.

The Honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan had been requested at a conference to take suo motu notice of the Sialkot lynching incident. But the question beckons, can the state interfere with an individual’s religious beliefs? Considering that the Prime Minister tends to carry out behind the curtain agreements with extremist organisations, can the state machinery operate against those who hold radical beliefs — beliefs which have long been inculcated into them by the system itself?

At the brink, a familiar solution screams in the face. Education. Despite having a right of education under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan 1973, the state of education in Pakistan has been horrendous to say the least. For politicians, funds are miraculously always adequate to purchase cars and houses but when it comes to regulating the system of public education, somehow funds are non-existent. It evades logic and baffles any reasonable being as to why the Honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan does not take suo motu notice pertaining to the lack of education in the country.

It would of course be safe to say that the entire system apprehends rectification if widespread education is initiated. The entire edifice of corruption will face annihilation if masses are educated and given exposure. The only corner of budget that needs expansion is education, not weapons; and this notion is well understood by those in power. Ranging from judicial activism to closed door meetings, the entire structure needs to be shaken up either through rebellion or through mass revolution. Enough blood has flown in the gutters and enough evidence has been led, yet nothing has changed. It is time that power was taken back from those abusing the illiterate masses for their own gains. Be the change before rebellion is ‘neutralised’.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2021.

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