A pathetic situation

Grief is what one feels when tragedy occurs. A perverse abandon replaces grief when tragedy becomes a trend.

To understand ourselves, we must understand nature. Nature celebrates diversity. Natural selection – the underlying principle of biological evolution – yields plurality; plurality that we see all around us. Yet, something bizarre has happened in Pakistan; an ‘unnatural selection’ of sorts. Where all essential features of natural selection stand utterly violated. What else could possibly explain the morbid constancy with which we murder diversity? The way we, with the single-minded devotion of a mad-man, go out of our way to torch and execute our minorities? What else explains this sociopathic intolerance for anyone who dare believe in a different God, or different book, while we unctuously hanker for a singular world dominating ideology – ‘a one size fits all’ worldview that rejects all debate and dissent? We are a ridiculous anomaly in an increasingly globalised, boundary-less world.

Here is the irony: Pakistan was literally conceived over a concern for minority rights. Here’s the catch: They were ‘Muslim minority rights’.

Pakistan was literally conceived over a concern for minority rights. Here’s the catch: They were ‘Muslim minority rights’

Granted, Mr Jinnah delivered some great speeches on how the minorities would thrive in this new Islamic utopia. While addressing the first constituent assembly he famously said, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Words more secular have not been uttered. He would, to Pakistan’s great misfortune, not live much longer past that day. And soon after his death, whatever was left of his vision died as well. The Objective Resolutions — meant to serve as a preamble to successive constitutions – took a hammer at Jinnah’s promise and knocked it out of existence. Maudoodi and his comrades giggled. The minorities cringed. And today we understand why, when another Christian online casino Church – twin Church – lays in ruin, this time in Lahore’s Youhanabad area.

Make no mistake: no one is claiming that this horrible attack represents mainstream Muslim mentality in Pakistan. We may have conservatives in our midst — literalists and puritans –denuded of nuance and metaphor, but no person in his senses would endorse mass murder of this sort. But just because we wish not to annihilate all minorities, isn’t really saying much. We are complicit, all of us, in our malign apathy towards a modern day class-system, better understood as serfdom that confers a status so low on its non-Muslim minorities that their place in society is only slightly higher than the level of a farm animal. Anyone who doubts this is welcome to visit the slums and ghettos that we reserve for them. And they are an endangered species too — “mysteriously” depleting in numbers since partition. And such apathy, coupled with a theocratic framework that constitutionally ‘keeps the non-Muslim in his place’ has been one of the many unacknowledged enablers of terrorist gangs that attack our Temples, Churches, Imambargahs, Gurdwaras, shrines, etc. Not too long ago it was the Church bombing in Peshawar that claimed 78 lives. And before that, there was the Joseph Colony incident where an angry mob — some 3000 enraged baton-wielding Muslims — decided to rampage through a Christian colony and torch around 100 houses following blasphemy charges against a Christian man. And so this horror show continues to play out, and we silently sit and watch, just like we silently watched a Christian couple get lynched and burned in a kiln by a raging mob, very recently.

This time though, the tables were turned, and for the first time it was the Christians who retaliated. In a baton-charging frenzy, the mob took on the policemen or anyone even remotely posing resistance. And somewhere along their manic rush, they killed two men they suspected were the perpetrators of the Church bombing. So far their claim looks suspect.

Our judiciary has failed us, over and over again. An institution that is not beyond the sway of powerful men who run the country. That quietly cedes to the army to do what it fails to do itself

A natural question, then, arises: Why the mob proclivity and vigilantism? Every time something untoward happens, people in Pakistan start taking things in their own hands, vandalising and bludgeoning their way to private, barbaric, justice. Is mob violence in our DNA? We are after all quite a mob minded people. Herd mentality is everywhere, it’s in our institutions, in our politics, the way we cast our votes, or even in the way we practice our faith or form our beliefs. It only follows that this be the way we mete out justice. We are, after all, a people who have utterly lost faith in due process. And that’s one area where we can’t blame the common man. Our judiciary has failed us, over and over again. An institution that is not beyond the sway of powerful men who run the country. That quietly cedes to the army to do what it fails to do itself. The same institution that exonerates powerful criminals while convicting the weak who may have done no wrong. The same place where legal cases tend to linger around forever and ever, till natural death of the parties involved brings desired closure. And then there is the government that talks about NAP and anti-terror campaigns. It promises to ban hate-speech but fails to ban the people who deliver it. That the place where this recent episode happened also happens to be the CM’s constituency is a moment of abject shame for the incumbent. And let’s not even spare a thought for law enforcement, that will accomplish everything under the sun other than enforcing law. This is a pathetic situation.

Yes, we need a more tolerant society. Where differences in beliefs, race, class, colour and creed are not just tolerated, but are celebrated. Where green doesn’t bleed out the white, but merges with it. But we also need institutions that actually work. Institutions that people can believe in. Until then, incidents like the Youhanabad church bombing and its ensuing mob brutality will remain more a pattern than just one-off tragedy.