Messiah complex

There have always been fissures within Pakistan’s power corridors. The difference now is that these fissures are widening and tearing at the seams. In the backdrop of this political landscape, cricket legend turned politician Imran Khan has perhaps forgotten to shine the other side of a ball that now refuses to swing his way. But do not forget, Khan in his prime was a fierce strategist. This time he has called foul play.

Not only has the ex-PM unabashedly fixed the blame for his temporary political demise on US intervention, but he has explicitly called upon the establishment to side with the “truth”. But what exactly is this “truth” that Khan refers to in his boisterous speeches?

To understand this perplexing notion, one must turn to the very title, the heart of PTI’s manifesto: ‘The road to Naya Pakistan’. The word ‘Naya’ refers to newness or novelty. Or in other words, emancipation from a past riddled with corruption and towards a novel or ‘Naya’ future that upholds justice or ‘Insaf’. A re-birth of sorts. This fairly simple idea has been elevated to the status of a transcendent truth, partly by pseudo-religious and populist narratives and partly by our society’s general discontent. Under these narratives — the most significant being that Islam and Pakistan are synonymous — ‘the road to Naya Pakistan’ is deliberately linked to ‘Riyasat-e-Madinah’ and therefore juxtaposes itself with ‘the road to Truth’. The leader who proclaims such a truth is automatically considered as a prophetic personality, a messiah.

The problem here is that Khan truly believes he is the one who walks this path of truth. Or, dare I say, that he himself is the truth. And anyone and everyone against him or his ideological views should be sent to the guillotine. The muzzling of the press, the fierce crackdown against opposition, and an attempt to subvert the Constitution are just some cases in point. For these reasons I say Khan is not an authoritarian leader but a totalitarian one. He also has another important ingredient that one requires to become a modern messiah; he was a superstar celebrity. He has returned as our political saviour.

The confusion is in our failure to understand that a religious messiah is inherently different from a political or any other one, precisely because it would require its extraction from its Abrahamic shell; it would require, in the words of Derrida, messianicité sans messianisme or messianicity without messianism. This profane messiah would not only be of a ‘weak power’ but would emancipate the subjugated and the oppressed without a definite end — be it a class-less society, a Riyasat-e-Madinah, or a forever Kingdom.

For Walter Benjamin, it takes the form of redemption and concerns the ‘profane order of the profane’. For Derrida, the messianic is an apprehension of the past and the future simultaneously. But perhaps what interested me the most is Kafka’s notion of messianic time: “The messiah will only come when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival.” This means the messiah will ultimately reveal itself after society has achieved rebirth.

Not only is Khan inflicted with a severe messiah complex, but his rise has triggered a deep yearning in society for messianic revival. Some are so deeply entrenched by it that they dream of prophetic messages being bestowed onto certain powerful personalities. Those, including me, who once criticised MQM’s slogan ‘Hum Ko Manzil Nahi Rehnuma Chahiye [we do not want a path, we want a leader]’ know now what it truly means. This is our current condition; of waiting for an obscure divine being to drop down from the heavens and save us while we refuse to act collectively.

A messiah can neither be selected nor be created, and instead emerges organically from within the rubble of uncertainty. The messianic reveals itself, it cannot be called upon. Waiting for one becomes a futile task.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2022.

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