Revolution in Pakistan?

Columnist ANWAR AHMAD sees a possible revolution in Pakistan. Published with thanks to THE NEWS.

Pakistan was created to change the lot of the Indian Muslims. Since then, every regime in this ravaged land has ridden into power on the slogan of change. While some even masqueraded as revolutionaries, all had vowed to “eradicate poverty” and “change the fate of the poor.” Yet, the parasitic status quo continues to thrive, pushing more and more people into dehumanising poverty.

Can this inequitable power disequilibrium ever change? Certainly not through the freemarket global-capitalist model being pursued. Then, how?

The traditional power groups, those that have held power or aspire for it, all profess change without specifying a plausible delivery mechanism. But, in essence, most are defenders of the status quo. Thus, democracy or dictatorship, things only worsened for the poor.

Hence the revolutionary rhetoric that the parasitic oligarchy, that cuts across and unites the power-groups, must be uprooted to give real change a chance. In theory, this eliminative mechanism is inherent in the electoral process. Yet, in practice, repeated elections have strengthened the mafiosi — not just in Pakistan, but in India as well. Over 50-million of its people are drought-stricken, over 300-million subsist in squalor even as the Brahmin mafia is branching out as a world power.

Is a revolution, then, the only solution? Perhaps. But can there be a revolution in Pakistan? There certainly is tyranny, oppression, injustice, a shocking degradation of humanity at the hands of a plundering and apathetic minority and, of course, a rapidly widening rich-poor gulf. All signs that the tinder-box is primed, and waiting for the fuse to be lit.

But the incomparable Professor Abdul Qayyum has scripted a devastating prescription that suggests otherwise. Here it is, in all its profound and caustic eloquence:

We are a soft people, we are a greedy people.

We want all the benefits of a revolution without having to undergo the rigours of a revolution.

We want to eat our cake and have it too. We are patient and long-suffering when oppressed. We allow injustice to accumulate till it breaks our back. Because we never stand up every time we should, we will never stand up the last time we must.

We are a spineless people, we do not have it in us to make a revolution.

We complain, we whine. We talk too much, we act too little.

We are perpetually letting off steam, and the steam never builds up. We are low compression engines because we are leaking all the time. We do not have the horse-power to launch a revolution.

We love authoritarian rule, we admire the man on horseback.

We bow before false gods. Our worldly affairs we leave to the absolute monarch, our religious affairs to the Pir Sahib.

Because we will not mould our destiny with our own hands, others mould it for us—as THEY please.

We are easily appeased, because we have lived too long on crumbs. This is true of the common man. The few at the top are never appeased, because their appetite grows by what they feed on. They have some crumbs to spare and the situation will not change until those below refuse to be satisfied with crumbs.

Revolutions have to be made, they will not just occur.

We are a people who dream dreams, not men who see visions. We cannot even latch on to a vision because we think we already have one, when all we have is a slogan.

A vision calls for honest recognition and resolute endeavour, not a smug assurance of paradise foretold.

Those who belie in action the vision that they formulate in words are hypocrites, and hypocrites cannot usher in revolutions.

Between the Prophet and the demagogue the gulf is wider than the seven seas. The gulf is just as wide between the man who lives by his faith and the man whose faith is a cloak beneath which he lives as he pleases.

In this land of believers there are just too many who do not believe.

Every forest fire begins with a fire in the heart of the forest.

The fire spreads when the land is parched and the twigs are dry.

Without a fire there can be no conflagration, without a wind the fire will not spread.

So it is with a revolution. The fire and the wind are in the hearts of men, dry twigs alone do not make for an ablaze.

There are many fires waiting to be lit, they are too few around to light them.

We are a land of pujaris, and the buth reigns where pujaris reside. Where would the buth be without the pujari? The pujari erects buths, he cannot destroy them. The Prophet changed the mindset of the idolaters before he destroyed the idols.

Pujaris cannot usher in revolutions, prophets do—and those who know what it means and what it takes not to bow before false gods in every endeavour that they undertake.

Not a pretty picture, is it? But brutally incisive, and sadly true. One can think only of two occasions when the phlegmatic subcontinent came closest to what might have been a revolution.

The first was the Pakistan Movement. But here, too, Prof Qayyum could say that in the Quaid-i-Azam we were worshipping an idol.

The moment he fell, we began squabbling over what the vision really was and, having lost half of his Pakistan and brought the other half to ruin, we are more confused and rudderless than ever.

The second was the triumph of ZA Bhutto. Early in his rule, the very same people who had endured tyranny for centuries as their “ordained fate” were ready to tear the tyrants to pieces. All they needed was a signal from “the Chairman.” It never came. they were, of course, worshipping a false god and, eventually, were grateful for the crumbs he threw their way.

To prove Prof Qayyum’s point, they could not even storm the Bastille when Bhutto went helplessly to the gallows. To this day, they revere him not for Roti, Kaprra aur Makaan—which he could not provide—but the tatters of dignity he clothed them in. This was the best that had happened to them in centuries and, rather than being outraged that their due was denied to them, they remain indebted. Whether it is a cyclone or drought or gang-rape, the poor accept the crumbs with a dazed resignation—not a spark of anger.

What, then, of faith? It can, after all, move mountains. Would the people rise in the name of faith? Why should they? They either have it already, or they don’t. In both cases, no point in fussing over it.

But what if from faith were to flow equity and justice—paradise right here, rather than the Hereafter. One reason the western capitalist-Christian crusaders cite for their success against communism is that it had made the “fatal mistake” of promising heaven on earth. Christianity, on the other hand, is thriving in a far more impoverished and dehumanised Eastern Europe and Russia by avoiding that “mistake”.

And, what of Islam? It is, after all, founded on equality and equity, exhorting the rich to return—as their rightful due—to the poor what is more than the rich need. We also know that the Almighty may forgive omissions in man’s obligations to Him but will be unsparing in violations of the rights of fellow beings. Islam, thus, promises a paradise here as well as in the Hereafter. Why, then, does this vision not enthuse the oppressed? Is it because it is lost in the demagoguery and hypocrisy of those who peddle it?

It is perhaps just as well that there cannot be a mass revolution in Pakistan. Revolutions are notoriously unpredictable and are, too often, hijacked by the status quo. But we can certainly breed is anarchy—which is, actually, happening by default.

So, lest the parasites rest too easy, oppressed and supine though the people may be, they love spectacles. And what better fun than to see their tormentors strung up from the poles? So while we may be incapable of a mass revolution, the protective structure of the status quo having been eaten hollow by its beneficiaries, all it needs is a small but charged minority to topple it. Need one dwell on what will follow then?