The vindication of Ayaz Amir

I never thought I would start off a column by mentioning the Lahore High Court (LHC) and Ayaz Amir in the same breath. It’s rather like talking about the Teutonic Knights and Alexander Nevsky — though the contexts, location and period are rather different. I have never been a great admirer of this particular geographical limb of the Pakistani judicial system. Many of the verdicts handed down by Their Lordships in Lahore in the past were loaded with darker imperatives that went against the groin. The one that particularly nicked the collective nerve was the way Mukhtaran Mai’s appeal was handled. Let me assure you, it’s not only the women who would have liked to have seen those crabby members of the panchayat, who ordered the gang rape, strung up in the central jail. I would have gotten Jamil Dehlvi to make a black and white movie of the whole distasteful episode and shown the wily old codgers lined up along the Appian Way. It has a nice Roman ring to it and I am sure the Thinking Man would have recognised the symbolism.

Anyway, getting back to Ayaz Amir, I was immensely pleased when I heard on the jungle telegraph that the election tribunal in the Rawalpindi branch of the LHC had overturned the decision of the returning officer in the election commission who had bounced the politician out of the race for the National Assembly. Now, before you order the public disemboweling of the bloke who gave Ayaz Amir the thumbs down signal in the Coliseum, just ask yourself, how did it come to pass that a returning officer had been given so much power and authority to decide who should and who shouldn’t be given a salary to sit in the lower chamber of freeloaders? The chap who was conducting this particular inquisition was obviously hooked, gaffed and kippered by his own interpretation of Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution. It is, however, not very clear just what it was that miffed the returning officer in Ayaz Amir’s case. Was it his questioning of a law that was often misused to falsely implicate Christians on blasphemy charges; or that he imbibes; or that he is just doing what the founder of this republic asked the nation to do in his historic 1948 speech at the inauguration of the State Bank of Pakistan?

I don’t remember Ayaz Amir, after hearing that a fellow Pakistani had wounded and buried six young girls while they were still alive, standing up in the National Assembly and saying “Don’t interfere in our customs.” Or defrauding the nation by taking kickbacks. Or saying, “What’s the difference? After all, a degree is a degree.” He leads a quiet life, keeps to himself, writes, occasionally appears on the telly and comes across as a well-read, pleasant, urbane and reasonable chap that doesn’t kick the neighbour’s dog and a golf club would not have to be paid to say nice things about. I remember spending a delightful evening at his residence in Rawalpindi a number of years ago when we were both writing for Dawn. We listened to a recording of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral”, while wolfing down lots of kebabs. I told him that we were both members of an endangered species and total misfits in a society that was slowly, but perceptibly, becoming increasingly obscurantist and retrogressive. Fortunately, we still have freedom of the press bequeathed to us by Mohammed Khan Junejo and endorsed by Pervez Musharaf. Let’s hope they don’t take that away from us.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2013.