Daily Times

Perhaps for a human being, the most pressing and wicked situation is when one cannot speak the whole truth and express one’s mind unequivocally according to one’s conscience without groping and searching for words to avoid the irk and wrath of the earthly gods, not for inappropriate standpoint but for venturing to reach the veracity of facts.

To taste this poisonous reality, just sit in front of the proverbial idiot box and watch a few talk shows — but only if you have enough stamina to bear that mental torture where lies and fabrication are galloping while the truth is a silent spectator.

However, it also helps to witness with naked eyes the demonstration of forgery of opinion, twisting of facts and suppressing of the truth. One can get a hands on lesson that truth is not infallible. Sometimes truth cannot or does not reveal itself but one has to seek it relentlessly. And therefore, the human brain devises reasoning and arguing. But currently, this luxury is so expensive that no one or few can afford to employ it. Thus, human beings have also devised another trick or instrument to dig out the truth, though silently, because silence is also an expression.

Consciously, we tried through our education syllabus and tailored narrative to prevent even the germination of the diabolical faculty of questioning, reasoning, arguing and critical mind and thinking. But 70 years is not a period long enough to eradicate the entire body of indigenous informal knowledge that transfers from generation to generation. And I believe that whatever good or positive our society has is all because of that legacy.

In the time of oppression, truth goes underground, justice takes refugee in some unknown island, incapacitating the victim to reveal the perpetrators of injustice and transgression, leaving no option other than self incrimination because finger-pointing the powerful can invite more wrath

A comment by Mushtaq Ahmed Yousafi, a satirical writer, on the situation in Karachi aptly captures the fencing between truth and lies. He said in order to view an upright vertical Karachi, a person needed to be upside down. Therefore, if you want to see the upside-down phenomenon in Pakistan in its proper shape, your position should be upside down.

Generally, it is said and believed that truth speaks loudly, but the reality is too ugly and often defies medical science principles too that the inanities of a powerful do not shoot up blood pressure which usually hits the ceiling in the case of the weak. Therefore, truth neither speaks loudly in every circumstance nor is always infallible. But mostly it is the truth which remains silent. However, silence does not always signify the truth when there are many to speak on behalf of the lie. Mostly power does not like to speak all the time and on every issue. Perhaps the saying, ‘when your dogs are barking, you do not need to bark yourself’ aptly applies to such a situation.

In the time of oppression, truth goes underground, justice takes refugee in some unknown island, incapacitating the victim to reveal the perpetrators of injustice and transgression, leaving no option other than self incrimination because finger pointing the powerful can invite more wrath than self incrimination.

The only luxury of justice the victim has, is to show his wounds and admit they are self inflicted to avoid not to wade in hot waters by exposing the inflictors because that can sprinkle some drops on the smokescreen of the illicit relationship between power and justice. The more cruel and bizarre plot of our contemporary political melodrama unfolding every evening on the TV screen is the squabble between the former and current victims. The former victims accuse the current of ‘though we were charged with the same baton, we did not scream or squeak as loudly as you’.

Sometimes oppression also forces to retreat from your truth or hold back your true belief in the name of belief or sanctity of divinity. When Galileo was forced by the Church in 1616 not to teach and speak about or defend in any manner the ‘Copernican Theory’, that the earth and planets revolve around the sun. If Galileo persisted a terrible example would have been made out of him in the name of divinity, truth and sanctity. Neither belief nor truth was at the alter except the self styled sanctity of the earthly institution of the church to rule in the garb of divinity. Nothing happened to the belief of million of Christians when later the Church admitted the truth but at the cost of hindering the change and prolonging the dark era for some time in Europe. So, truth and prosperity itself remained the principal victims of fusion of divinity and earthly power for tailoring robes of divine sanctity for mundane institutions.

In our peculiar, medieval age, the sign of veracity and justness is not speaking loudly. Those shouting at the top of their lungs indicate that he/she is on the right side of the power and wrong side of history. And remember, the humble and meek voice constantly seeking a proper selection of words and expression indicates that he/she is on the wrong side of power but right side of history. When Galileo was taunted why he gave up when he was right, he replied that the earth was and would revolve around the sun, so why he should be killed at the hands of those ignorant priests. But the question is — can our country afford our silence?

The writer is a political analyst from Swat and can be reached at talimand.khan@gmail.com and on Twitter @MirSwat

Published in Daily Times, October 12^th 2017.