Daily Times

In Pakistan, the phrases such as banana republic are used rather loosely; however, in literature and political science they have definitive meanings. So when recently a federal minister questioned ‘are we a banana republic?’ I found it a misplaced analogy for Pakistan. We are not a banana republic, but perhaps worse in some other ways.

But first this: In 1904, American novelist William Sydney Porter had coined the phrase of banana republic in his novel ‘Cabbages and Kings’ which was plotted over a small maritime state of Honduras. Honduras was then characterised with a society suffering from abject social class inequality, an unstable government, and precarious economy relying almost entirely on export of Banana that too through American fruit companies, who exercised decisive influence over polity and economy of the country at the expense of the poor inhabitants.

Likewise the phrase ‘Absurdistan’ was coined in 1971 by Munich university magazine of political studies, which meant to reflect such a state of affairs in a particular environ or state where absurdity is the norm, where one can’t understand and define affairs otherwise logically, and any logical argument or construction is responded with irrational and illogical diatribe. Pakistan may have some aspects of a banana republic, but it doesn’t really fit in with this character as such. What unfortunately the Pakistan of our days look like is the ‘absurdistan’.

For instance, ask any educated person, he will hardly concede with the idea of democracy in Pakistan without first requiring it to deliver all the good that he may have imagined of from any type of government. Not realising that democracy is a system of government that citizens rightfully elect according to their priorities and preferences. So greater the citizens are politically conscious and educated, they will most probably elect commensurately better representatives to form a government accountable to them. However, so many here are dismissive of the idea of politics, politicians and thereby democracy without giving slight consideration to the pre-requisite of the time and space to let the democratic governments work unperturbed year after year to gradually grow into a functioning democracy. Isn’t it as absurd as if you postpone the efforts to make an airplane unless the plane made is already capable of flying across Atlantic?

Most in the media were worried about Interior Minister’s presence at the courts premises but they were unmoved by Rangers’ deployment without any order from the civil administration

As much curious is our foreign policy, especially our stance on Kashmir dispute with India. Without dilating on the past context, the punch line of our stance is ‘no good neighbourly relations with India, unless it agrees to resolve Kashmir dispute’; that too in favour of Pakistan. So instead of keeping it as no doubt an important issue between the two countries while exploring cooperation in other areas of bilateral relations, the point perhaps we drive is give us Kashmir first before we become friends. Let’s hope India sometime soon gets this desperate to earn our friendship. But bad news is India has not shown any such appetite yet and it’s unforeseeable in near future.

How absurdity rules us and defines our everyday polemics may still be better understood by just two recent incidents. One, a woman parliamentarian complained of sexual harassment at the hands of her party leader and offered to provide proofs from her phone’s text messages. In any civilised society, it’s a grave allegation worthy of attention and investigation. Unfortunately, what dominated in our national discourse over this in electronic and print media was the suspicion on ‘why did she take so long to come up with this allegation’.

Then, early this week, the Chief Commissioner of Islamabad informed the Federal Minister of Interior that Rangers, a paramilitary force, had taken over the premises of accountability court without civil administration’s permission and had barred anyone including media persons to enter the court, where the former prime minister had appeared for trial. When the minister reached the court to resolve the situation, he too faced humiliation from the deployed force there which interestingly reports to him. Elsewhere, this would have been taken as an awful insubordination if not revolt. In our la-la land, what most of media and so-called analysts were worried about was ‘why did a minister have to go there?’ and not over the fact that Rangers had not only got itself deployed without an order from civil administration, but also humiliated its civilian boss.

The list of our absurdities is duly contributed by our judiciary, military, government, and people and it is too long to be presented here. But the regrettable outcome of rendering ourselves as ‘Absurdistan’ is that despite whatever is fed to masses through controlled media and strangulation of dissenting voices, the world is not even distantly eager to buy our twisted narratives and take us for a cherished people and the country.

The writer is a sociologist with interest in history and politics. He tweets @Zulfirao1 and is accessible at zulfirao@yahoo.com

Published in Daily Times, October 5^th 2017.