A seven-member bench of the most honourable and puissant Supreme Court of Pakistan (SC) has delivered its ‘full’ verdict on the prime minister’s (PM) contempt of court case. Clearly, I have little expertise in constitutional law to make any intelligent observations in this matter. But what did excite me was the appended ‘opinion’ by the most honourable Justice Khosa in which he quoted John Donne as well as Kahlil Gibran and submitted a riff on Gibran’s famous poem Pity the nation.
Before I proceed, I wish to state without reservation that my purpose is not to critique the poetic excursion of the honourable Justice Khosa and if my subsequent screed is in any way considered a criticism of the judgment handed out by the most honourable bench of the SC, I most abjectly and humbly beg forgiveness in advance. It is just that the appended ‘poetic’ part of the verdict did bring back memories from a time long gone.
More than 40 years ago when both Pakistan and the Beatles had just broken up, Elvis was trying to make a comeback, Dylan was getting repetitive and a new generation of rock stars was emerging. Those of us into serious things read stuff like Gibran, Carlos Castaneda and Idries Shah and other stuff now called ‘new ageism’. Indeed as members of a particular generation, we were always, it seems, in search of some ‘universal’ truths — and probably still are! Castaneda and Shah were fun but I must admit that Gibran was rather boring and a trifle pedantic.
Shah’s The Sufis, even though considered by many Sufi ‘experts’, including Annemarie Schimmel to be ‘bogus’, was still a great read and made Sufism accessible to many in the west including a few like me. The book is worth reading if for nothing else then the introduction by Robert Graves, a brilliant primer about the role of Sufism and Islam in the development of European thought. Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtalan was riveting. Interestingly, Castaneda’s supposed ‘anthropological’ work was also declared bogus.
So when the most honourable Judge of the SC brought up one of Gibran’s rather famous poems, I was a little surprised and went back to re-read the original. Sadly, it did not move me even today as it had failed to move me all those years ago. But Justice Khosa’s take on Pity the nation did, however, stop me in my tracks especially his first line, “Pity the nation that achieves nationhood in the name of a religion.” For most of my adult life, whenever I have thought of or read about the history of Pakistan, my sense always was that Pakistan was not created in the ‘name of religion’, a fact presented most forcefully in Jinnah’s speech as the president of the Constituent Assembly (August 11, 1947). It was only after the creation of Pakistan that all the Islamist parties of India that had vehemently opposed the creation of Pakistan descended on Pakistan and immediately decided to take ‘ownership’ of the new country as an ‘Islamic State’.
I also went back and re-read parts of the ‘Munir Report’ written by two very erudite and distinguished jurists, Justices Munir and Kayani less than 60 years ago where they categorically state, “Pakistan is being taken by the common man, though it is not, as an Islamic State.” And they go on to say that, “And as long as we rely on the hammer when a file is needed and press Islam into service to solve situations it was never intended to solve, frustration and disappointment must dog our steps. The sublime faith called Islam will live even if our leaders are not there to enforce it. It lives in the individual, in his soul and outlook, in all his relations with God and men, from the cradle to the grave, and our politicians should understand that if Divine commands cannot make or keep a man a Musalman, their statutes will not.”
It disturbs me a bit then that Justice Khosa seems to suggest as a ‘settled matter’ that Pakistan was created in the name of religion, presumably Islam. Since his statement even though in poetic form is part of a judgment by the SC, then I suppose for all practical purposes, it is now the ‘law of the land’. It is obvious that Pakistan is not a secular country and the constitution clearly states that no laws can be made that are contrary to Islamic law, and ever since the ‘Objectives Resolution’ became a part of the constitution, there is now no going back. Clearly Justices Munir and Kayani were entirely prescient when they wrote what I have quoted above about how laws cannot make good Muslims. As is often said about laws, it is impossible to legislate morality.
However, when Justice Khosa decided to quote John Donne and Kahlil Gibran, he did of course forget to mention two things about Donne’s meditations. First, it is a defence of the supremacy of the Catholic Church and the second was the line that ‘no man is an island’.
The latter has been PM Gilani’s defence all along that he was not acting in a vacuum but rather as a part of an established point of view that obviously the honourable judges found unacceptable. As far as Gibran is concerned, perhaps another verse from his poem is worth quoting: “Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again.”
Finally, I wonder with an entire pantheon of Urdu poetry available why Justice Khosa had to find relevance in two ‘Catholic’ poets writing in English. I suppose it might have something to do with the need to write the judgment in English. But it also makes me wonder if Justice Khosa has read a lot of Gibran and deep down in his heart actually subscribes to Gibran’s ‘religious pluralism’. If he does, then bravo!
The writer has practised and taught medicine in the US and in Pakistan. He can be reached at [email protected]