Sultan Rahi and the Flawed Hero

“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”, go the wise words in the Batman movie. Nelson Mandela lived and died a hero, proving the dictum wrong in his particular case. Mandela and exquisite moral courage is too elevated a subject for me to deal with in detail. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary will not be the chief justice, same time, next week. This will be after a long time. To write a full account of his tenure here seems too exhausting and perhaps, not practical. One is beset with some ambivalence and to feel that one is not under oath at the time of departure. However, some of us have done the kicking when he was up and why stop being honest now.

On a completely unrelated note, Sultan Rahi was as authentic a star as this country has produced. Even those of us who cannot claim to be movie buffs and connoisseurs of indigenous cinema at all have seen some of his movies. There was more to Maula Jatt than blood, gandasa and gore. The plot was almost always of the protagonist, the alpha male leading a less than exemplary life, pushing and transgressing the boundaries of law and morality up to a fateful point. That point inevitably was when Sultan Rahi was confronted with an even bigger law breaker, even more vicious, and at that point, Sultan Rahi will take the one moral stand of his life. Drama ensues, which is neither for the faint of heart nor for those who are too prissy about the niceties of law and regulation, etc. The battle was the final showdown between good and evil, there are bound to be causalities, both of humans and principles. In a hair-raising contest, Sultan Rahi would emerge victorious, all previous sins and flaws redeemed and the movie would end. The last point bears emphasis, the movie would, in fact, end. It has to end. Our last impression of the flawed hero is of being covered in blood, triumphant and happily ever after left to our imagination. The script writers know, not to tempt fate and reason by making a sequel of the reformed hero’s peaceful, law-abiding future life. Alas, the scripts in life are not regulated as neatly.

Apologies for the digression, now coming to the topic at hand. My Lord, the chief justice was on the bench that legitimised the military takeover by General Musharraf, also allowing him the power to amend the Constitution (a power even the Commando had not asked for); more glorious days of work have been done. Progress reports of the Supreme Court were supposedly presented in the Army House; and the friendship was heartwarming. Up to that fateful moment, when the Commando drunk on his arrogance (and possibly just drunk) summoned My Lord and asked for the resignation. Here he was in his full glory, in uniform, with top generals flanking him. And that was the point of the great, singular moral stand. My Lord did what not many had done before and said no. The rest as they say is not history (primarily because My Lords are in no mood to let us forget anytime soon). The lawyers movement, where terms such as ‘the vanguard of the revolution’, ‘class struggles’ were thrown around casually; with the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Marxists sharing stages and making common causes, the great conflict of our times, etc. How and what happened, happened and My Lord emerged the victor. Familiar story right? Except, that the show did not end; it had just begun.

There is always tyranny in purity, in self-righteousness. Particularly, for those who have not always been pure, who have avowed allies and some not quite so. Objectivity and neutrality are qualities that neither heroes and messiahs aspire to, nor villains and demagogues are capable of. Hence, judges are ill-suited to be both. The work of a judge is lonely and impersonal, neither looking for praise nor disturbed by critique (even if it seems contemptuous). Once these principles are lost, the entire edifice risks collapsing. And perhaps, collapse it did.

The first major judgment that gave the clear indication that it was going to be personal and hence not quite pleasant was the PCO judges decision. In that judgment, My Lord and the Court did precisely what they held against General Musharraf; the sending of judges of the superior court home without the due process of Article 209. The moralising in the hundreds of pages of the NRO, the implementation proceedings where the focus was on one person alone, the prime minister’s disqualification, the Memo fiasco, all had one common thread. There was no point in euphemism then and there is none now. My Lord did not like the previous government one bit, he liked the Pakistan People Party even less, and he actively disliked President Zardari. No violation of any code of conduct if personal dislike does not interfere with judicial function. If it did or did not is not for me to comment on today.

There is too much that was done pre- and post-2009 to be summed up in one go; some of us tried to do it in real time. However, it was indeed the very personal, which was the most dispiriting, i.e., the adventures of Master Arsalan Iftikhar. The manner in which the entire episode was dealt with, allowed the cynics to mischievously think if it was not all just self-righteousness and saviour instinct, if God forbid some of this (and by logical extension all of it) was calculated and pretenses enacted, etc.

As the time for adieu comes, the Supreme Court is ransacked once again, the lawyers baton-charged once again, such are the ironies of history. The moral and legal authority of all courts other than the Supreme Court is at its lowest. As the baton is about to be handed to one of the finest and most temperate judges in the country, My Lord, Justice Jillani, one is compelled to recalibrate standards. The standard on which Justice Jillani is judged should be higher and hopefully will emerge unscathed, judge-like.

As December 12 approaches, again on an unconnected note, it is useful to remember that life in general and statecraft, in particular, is not a Sultan Rahi movie; it goes on after the climax; heroes are not permanent.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2013.

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