For human beings, nothing is more hideous and reprehensible than a life marred by the phantoms of fear. It annihilates the desire to live. Nothing is more agonising than a steady but certain death of one’s own soul, to which one is a mere helpless witness. When the poison is instilled into the veins to paralyse thinking, each accurate thought becomes a symbol of liberation. Oscar Wilde precisely points out, “No life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.” In Pakistan, this process of arresting growth commenced in its infancy. The language riots, the pulverisation of students’ uprisings and the disbanding of the Communist Party were steps in this direction. In 1958, the direct takeover of power by the army completed the first chapter of the chequered history of this state of Pakistan. To rule any state the generals are always in need of legitimacy. For this, they look towards hegemonic nations that, for their vested designs, initially reluctantly but ultimately wholeheartedly support them. The other refuge these knights in shimmering arms look towards is religion, which, akin to the super-ego, acts to control and curb all human desires. The Generals, in collaboration with pious priests, pay their penance by putting innocent people into the sackcloth of religion. It is ironic that ‘populist’ politicians, when they lose contact with reality and feel isolated, and hence threatened, do not hesitate to play this card too. The rule of generals and populist politicians is indicative of the balance of forces between the expropriators and the expropriated class. In most cases, either of these pathological specimens are brought into power when the revolutionary moment is at its ebb. To crush the remaining zeal, their atrocious stranglehold proves decisive. Among politicians, Peron in Argentina and Bhutto in Pakistan were perfect examples. Both pleaded for the people, both while in power kept their followers as ‘shirtless’ as these expropriated always were. Every time change in the social condition proved to be a mere change in the topic. Bhutto, scared of the might of the working class, relentlessly used the religious card as well. His own Frankenstein, Zia, was even more callous. He, for his own legitimacy, ‘cribbed, barred and moored’ the people with another old and rusty chain – familiar as the lethal law or law against blasphemy. In her dealing with men, destiny may close its account but the system through its puppets does not do so. The evil that men do – or more precisely objective conditions demand them to do – lives on after them. In Zia’s legacy, nothing good to be interred was left behind hence the body was blown in the air to bits. The history of blasphemy dates back to the medieval era. The historian David Nash finds its track in the 14th century (1500) AD. By then, blasphemy was restricted to the disrespect of God, a very flexible concept but gradually when capitalism began to assert itself, finding its hegemony open to challenge by the church, which had the power of legislation, gradually redefined its position on this right of criticism named as blasphemy. As Voltaire states, “Blasphemies uttered in intoxication, in anger, in the excess of debauchery, or in the heat of unguarded conversation, have been subjected by legislators to much lighter penalties. For instance, the advocate whom we have already cited says that the laws of France condemn simple blasphemers to a fine for the first offence, which is doubled for the second, tripled for the third and quadrupled for the fourth offence. For the fifth relapse, the culprit is set in the pillory, for the sixth relapse he is pilloried, and has his upper lip burned off with a hot iron, and for the seventh he loses his tongue. This was an ordinance of the year 1666.” Jean-François Lefevre de la Barre was French nobility. According to Dickens, “France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed, at a distance of some fifty or 60 yards.” In this grisly murder of la Barre, the enthusiasm of the religious fanatics was in full flare. Before decapitating him his tongue was first severed. Later, his cadaver, along with Voltaire’s dictionary, were burnt together. The books that the world burns as “immoral are the books that show the world its own shame” (Oscar Wilde). And, as for victims whose good deed did not go unpunished, one needs to borrow the words of Sartre who, under Nazi atrocities, stated, “For the secret of a man is not his Oedipus complex or his inferiority complex, it is the limit of his freedom, his ability to resist torture and death.” La Barre, who endured torture and embraced his death valiantly, still stands as the symbol of religious intolerance in France. A statue in his memory was erected in Montmartre district of Paris. A street nearby also carries his name but where are those who, to maintain the hegemony of their system, did this heinous crime? They have been lost in the wilderness of time, in the dustbin of history where they actually belonged. It is equally interesting to note that the Christian clergy, which monopolised this trade of labelling the people as blasphemers, once itself was accused of the same crime by the Jovian and probably by the Jehovic (the Jews) as well. The former in their turn under Theodosius II could not save themselves either from the anathema of being blasphemers. It is quite interesting to note that in the primitive world of pure idolatry, not a single person believing in one omnipotent and omnipresent God had ever been declared a blasphemer. Tribal democracy was certainly more tolerant. Those historians who, unlike Gibbon and others of his ilk, without any reservations accept the notion of the existence of Christ endorse this cultural reality of those times. The Romans, without any reluctance along with their own gods, had accepted the statue of Jesus as an additional deity. (To be continued) The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com