Systemic partialities: Gathering for love fails to beckon to the electronic media

Thin stream of attendees at World Minorities Alliance’s ceremony calling for ‘a year of love’.

ISLAMABAD:

Each one of the 36 chairs in the front four rows of the National Press Club hall was empty. Each one had cardboard cut outs of different TV news talk show hosts pasted to the backrest.

All of the anchors pictured were invited to attend the January 1, 2014, ceremony, but none of them returned the invite, said J Salik, the ceremony’s organiser and convener of the World Minorities Alliance, an organisation conceived and headed by Salik himself.

Salik, though best known for his sociopolitical gimmickry and his eccentric and creative ways of registering a protest, was not off the mark with his message. The ceremony was organised to celebrate 2014 as the “year of love” as opposed to all the hate and intolerance Pakistan has witnessed over the past many years, he said.

The former federal minister, who also ran in the 2013 general elections from Islamabad, said he had invited the political talk show anchors because they can be the “best source” of spreading love in the country. Salik said the anchors can also hold the ruling elites accountable for Pakistan’s myriad problems, including the discrimination and disrespect faced by non-Muslim Pakistanis.

“Why did the Muslims of the subcontinent demand a separate country?” he asked of the audience that mostly consisted of journalists. Then, he answered the rhetorical question himself, “Because they were not being given respect.

The same situation is being replayed in Pakistan with non-Muslims.”

The solution, he said, was love — love for the public from their leaders, and love among Pakistani citizens, which would make them respect and accept each other. But Pakistani citizens also need to overcome the slave mentality that makes them vote for the same corrupt politicians again and again, Salik said.

The ceremony was ‘chaired’ by a cutout portrait of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was flanked by cutout Nelson Mandela and cutout Pope John Paul II.

Dr Ashraf Toor, President of the Pakistani American Congress who is visiting Pakistan, said there is a lack of protection for non-Muslims in the country. But Toor said Pakistani non-Muslims will have to create space for themselves with more political participation.

Salik ended with a plea for the anchorpersons, some of whom are believed to have close ties with the political elites, “Please do not be deceived by the capitalists, the feudal and the ruling elites. As long as the impoverished are not given respect, the country’s situation is not going to improve.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2014.