The fight against an exploitative system

The more you read history the more you realise the cost people have paid to gain freedom. The current government is busy celebrating the success of its democratic coup but reasonable and rational minds are studying the current situation and making their assessments of why this change became necessary. The notion that this government is not made up of crooks and criminals and those leading its charge are of fair and free dispositions is as offensive as it is absurd. Our exploitation as people is an ongoing process and quite similar to the European exploitation of the rest of the world. Like the rest of the exploited world, we are also helpless and would remain helpless until we decide as people to stand up and fight for our freedom.

History tells us that the entire province of Africa was looted and plundered as the West dug its claws into the continent of Africa. It is on similar lines that our dynastic political parties have dug their claws in Pakistani politics and even when kept out of power for the last three years they worked overtime, schemed and planned, and managed to overthrow a government that was popular with the people. The wealthy owners and leaders of these parties who have been called ‘Sicilian Mafia’ by the Supreme Court of Pakistan have devastated the political, social and economic system of this country much on the same lines as the West devastated the developing world for their own progress.

During the time of the western exploitation of the developing world white supremacy was reflected through colonialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing. In the 15th and 16th centuries, genocides in the Americas and the Caribbean and transatlantic slavery became the fuel that powered western development. According to an estimate, 12 million Africans were transported from the continent of Africa to America and the Caribbean during this period. The readers may consider that the slavery that I quote here as an example was the work in the distant past, but is the country that we live in today not created in the same image? The cotton and sugar industries of the Americas and Britain were built on the work of slaves. Slavery literally built these empires. I see the similarity in how these sugar barons and feudal lords in our country, most of whom are associated with politics, continue to benefit and build their personal empires at the cost of the lives of poor people who live in poverty and suffer but must serve the commercial interests of their masters at a very low paid cost. These people unlike African slaves are not chained but can they consider themselves free? West traded in human flesh but our industrialist politicians, landowners, sugar mill owners and exploiters of the poor people are the traders who trade the future well-being and aspirations of these poor people for their personal enrichment and progress. Rich American and British industrialists set up iron industries where manacles and chains were produced — the same manacles that chained and handcuffed millions of Africans that were transported to work in their sugar and cotton fields. A similar colonial mindset and mentality were used in this country to plant a network of motorways and roads in this country at an enormous cost not because the country needed these motorways and roads and they were its priority but only because our political masters were the owners of the huge cement and iron industries that churned out the raw material needed to build these networks of roads at huge profit margins for them. What we have today is a network of motorways that any developing country would be proud of but together with this we also have levels of poverty, education and health services which would bow down any self-respecting nation’s head in shame.

The Dutch, Portuguese, French, Britain, Spain and America all engaged in interdependent exploitation of the developed world. They not only stole the wealth of the developing world to build their motherlands, they also prevented the necessary development of these countries and kept them under economic oppression. Our fate has not been different under the rule of these political masters of ours. Millions of people in this country find themselves trapped in work and working conditions similar to those prevalent during the colonial time. Was this the destiny of the people of this country? Was this the purpose for which this country was created? The dictionary definition of colonialism is the direct rule over the subject people by a foreign power but in the modern world, a state can still be colonised not by direct but by an indirect rule by a sovereign power. Our political masters are colonists leftover orientalists who get their education from abroad, have their business setups abroad and live abroad; they only come here to stay like the imperialist powers of the past to rule and exploit us unchallenged.

But I am very happy, as never before I have seen the self-assurance, the awareness, the anger and the hope that I see in the people of Pakistan today. Not only are our political masters worried today but together with them those who indulged in the colonial practices of people and resource exploitation and who hoodwinked the system are worried too. If Imran Khan comes back in power, it is the hope of the people that he will bring meaningful change in the lives of the people of the poor and middle class. Already I get a sense that his support base perfectly fits and rests in this class of people. I have met many of Imran Khan’s critics who are generally the beneficiaries of the system created by our colonial mindset political masters. They fear the going down and abandonment of the current exploitative system — a system that created a huge division of haves and have-nots in this country; a system that supported the rich to become richer at the cost of exploitation of the poor; a system that bred illiberalism, injustice and inequality in our society.

It is the hope of the people that this system should go down and with it should go down the creators of this system. Imran Khan carries the hope of the people of this country on his shoulders. For the people, he is a messiah but for our colonist mindset holders, and the creators of this system he is a great threat