A master stroke

When the axe does occasionally fall, it is more likely to create self-inflicted wound than split the nut it's aimed at

Outside of the circle of art historians and students, few in Pakistan will have heard of the painter Richard Dadd (1817-1886) and his masterpiece “The Fairy Fellers’ master stroke”. Dadd painted it whilst detained in the Bethlehem Hospital, having murdered his father in 1843, and spent the rest of his life in protective custody. “The Fairy Fellers’ master stroke” is an allegorical picture that tells a story that revolves around the splitting of a large chestnut that will be used as a carriage for the Queen of the Fairies. The Fairy Feller stands with his axe poised awaiting the command to strike and hopefully split the nut with a single stroke.

An array of exotic figures people the rest of the painting, all awaiting the Master Stroke, but we are left hanging as to what might happen next — which brings us to the government of Sindh and the proposal to ban, for three months, instant messaging and Voice-over-Internet Protocols (VoIPs), specifically Skype, Whatsapp, Tango and Viber.

The justification for this latest attempt to limit the freedoms of the general public is that these services are used by ‘terrorists and criminal elements’. As those same elements also use cars, motorcycles, alarm clocks, miles of wires of assorted gauge and industrial quantities of fertiliser, it would perhaps, make sense to ban those as well. Food needs to go on the list. And water. Shoes — after all there is a well-documented attempt to blow up an airliner with a bomb hidden in a shoe. Bed linen can be dangerous stuff in the right circumstances … who knows what these miscreants might adapt to better serve their evil purposes.

The Sindh government needs also to give careful consideration to the banning of smoke signals, carrier pigeons, the passing of notes on scraps of paper in classrooms, semaphore, the use of torches (for signaling purposes), telepathy, drumming, blinking in such a way as to communicate a message, sign language (sad news for deaf people) and speaking in a foreign language other than approved dialects of Arabic.

All of which is, of course, preposterous, but with the ban on YouTube now a year old and no sign of it being lifted despite reports that the federal government ‘in principle’ is ready to reverse its decision; the question of personal freedoms and rights of access to information has risen up the agenda.

There are now over 30 million individual internet users in Pakistan and mobile phone penetration is reaching saturation point. Most internet access is by mobile phone and Skype is much used by the Pakistani diaspora to keep in touch globally.

Of course, terrorists use VoIPs to communicate — those involved in the Mumbai siege used it — but slapping a three-month ban on the means of communication used by a small minority to the massive inconvenience of the rest of the population, is not the answer.

But cracking down on already-banned organisations might be, as well as the development of a national counterterrorism strategy that goes beyond the wind-and-whistle of the All Parties Conference. The development of a countervailing narrative to combat extremism might be a good idea as well — or is that just too much like hard work and involves a bit of critical thinking?

A root and branch revision of the school curriculum that will undo years of corrosive damage done to young minds and has poisoned the thinking of the last two generations — well that would be a good move, would it not? Likewise, an improvement in the gathering of evidence at crime scenes and its presentation in the securing of convictions. It’s not exactly rocket science. Is it?

There is any number of Fairy Fellers in the phantasmagorical world of Pakistani politics. Master Strokes are very much their stock-in-trade but like the Fairy Feller in the painting, they seem to be frozen in a moment of time, the moment before the axe falls and splits the nut and gives the Fairy Queen a carriage pimped like no other ride. Yet, when the axe does occasionally fall, it is more likely to create a self-inflicted wound than split the nut it was aimed at. Pssst … no whispering, either.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2013.

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