Daily Times

Protest is the voice of disapproval of an existing state of affairs or public policy that created it. Voicing of protest is one of the individual citizen’s fundamental rights in liberal democracies. Dissociation from or opposition to an objectionable situation may be registered in more ways than one. The Magna Carta (1215) symbolised the English feudal lords’ protest against King John’s interference with their traditional privileges and governing authority within the territories they controlled. Subsequent movements to assert the individual’s liberties and his right to be governed by his own chosen representatives resulted from dissatisfaction with the restraints that had been imposed upon him.

As the ancient Greeks used to say, excess even of virtue is to be avoided. Protesting can be overdone and made a routine reaction to unwanted public policy and conduct of groups other than one’s own. It is usually accompanied by some kind of physical demonstration of discontent. Quite often, it takes the form of a strike, meaning work stoppage. Workers in an organisation may figure that if they abstain from work, the losses resulting to their employers will be large enough to induce them to increase the latter’s wages and other amenities. The employers on the other hand may reckon that the strikers’ inability to place food on the table for their families will soon force them to return to work.

Called ehtejaj in Urdu, protest would seem to have captured the minds and spirit of many people in various walks of life. Doctors and nurses, students and teachers, lawyers and judges, professionals and manual workers launch protest movements and strikes periodically, perhaps much too often. It may be that our people are wanting in self-restraint, inclined to be impulsive, and too quick to act. The strikers and their employers may be private parties. But when public functionaries go on strike, losses result to the people who pay taxes from the proceeds of which these losses are met.

Protest can generate action that may be inconsequential, disruptive, or creative. Opposition members in assemblies often stage walkouts to register their disapproval of the proceedings or the speaker’s ruling on a given issue. This is an inconsequential move. The protesters will retire to the lobby or the cafeteria and chat with friends. They will return to the house after a few minutes. Alternatively, some members of the ruling party or independents will go and coax them to return. The assembly’s proceedings are not suspended while the dissenters are away. Nothing other than symbolic disapproval has been accomplished.

Boycotts are another expression of protest and these can be effective in some measure. During the struggle for independence from British rule, Mahatma Gandhi periodically launched boycotts of fabrics and other products imported from the United Kingdom. These moves may also have been largely nominal, for they did not have the desired amount of receptivity in the country as a whole. Masses of people in the subcontinent come out on the streets to express their disapproval of a given government policy or action. In many such cases they block traffic, burn tyres on the roads, destroy automobiles and assault the uninvolved.

We should direct attention also to cases in which protest produces creative and socially beneficial consequences. In our own recent experience, there is the case of the lawyers’ movement in defence of the judiciary. Led by Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the Supreme Court had been giving verdicts unfavourable to the government. General Pervez Musharraf summoned him to his office on March 12, 2007 and in the supportive presence of the heads of the three armed services, asked him to resign. He declined and the general placed him under house arrest. This action provoked lawyers from all over the country to launch a protest movement. Thousands of them began to assemble in Lahore to march towards Islamabad. As they approached the capital, the government relented and declared that it would soon reinstate the chief justice.

This protest movement, ably managed by Aitzaz Ahsan among others, restored the higher judiciary to the place of honour it merits. It also fortified the judiciary’s independence. This achievement is not to be taken lightly. Judges had been deferential to the executive for much too long, not only to the detriment of their own institution but also to that of the country’s system of governance. Ambitious and reckless generals seized the government and established military rule and the judges not only condoned but blessed their action under the ‘law of necessity’. They never stopped to ask what the nature of the necessity was. Justice Hamoodur Rehman did hold that Ayub Khan’s transfer of power to Yahya Khan had been an act of treason. However, it should be noted that the learned judge spoke those words when Ayub Khan had already retired and Yahya Khan was languishing in detention in his own home. The present chief justice has disowned his predecessors in this regard and declared that the so-called law of necessity is not a part of this country’s law and is no longer to be invoked.

Far be it from me to deny that the culture of protest is an inalienable part of democratic governance. Democracy is not government by consensus; it is majority rule. It assumes the presence of a minority whose function it is to look for proper objects of protest and opposition in the government’s performance. Protest is equally a part of the Islamic political tradition. The citizen was free during the pious caliphate (632-661 AD) to challenge the ruler’s interpretations of Islamic imperatives. Imam Hussain’s refusal to place his hand of allegiance in the hand of an unrighteous ruler and his martyrdom at Karbala are supreme examples of protest against evil. This sacrifice of the Imam imparted to right the assurance of ultimate victory in its ongoing battle against wrong. In our own time, we in Pakistan cannot stand as neutral observers. We must take sides and I hope we will side with and fight for that which is right.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics. He can be reached at dranwar@lahoreschool.edu.pk