Daily Times

The crisis is far from over for the government even after the shameful surrender [of the state] to a handful of fascist clerics who had manged to rally a few hundred men for the Faizabad sit-in. To careful observers, it must be obvious that the chaos that spread across the country following Saturday’s operation was not a sudden eruption. It was well-coordinated collective action that targeted strategic points in major cities across the country, not to mention attacks on ruling party legislators.

Not even a day had passed since the signing of the agreement that the cleric who leads Tehrik Labbaik Ya Rasoolullah (TLYRA) announced another long march on January 4. Meanwhile, another cleric who heads an outfit called Idara Sirat-e-Mustaqeem (ISM) continues his sit-in in Lahore.

If all of this was not enough, the head of another barelvi outfit – Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) – is reported to have said on Wednesday that after the fiasco surrounding the Election Law voting for PML-N is forbidden. He announced that barelvi outfits will march towards Islamabad on 12th of Rabiul Awal, the birthday of the Holy Prophet PBUH), to demand the resignation of the government.

The SIC, TLYRA, and ISM are groups led by upstart barelvi clerics who can mobilise just enough numbers to play a crucial role in street protest and agitation. On their own and without patronage from the powers that be, these clerics lack the wherewithal needed to pull off big victories in electoral politics.

Thus, SIC leader Sahibzada Hamid Raza Kazmi’s decree that voting for PML-N is forbidden, or haram, is going to be only as effective as his handlers can make it appear to be. On their own, neither Kazmi nor Rizvi or any other cleric enjoys such an influence over the voting public in Pakistan that their decrees can determine election outcomes at the national level. But if decrees issued by clerics aren’t so effective, why may the government have been worried out the possibility of fatwas against former Law Minister Zahid Hamid? The answer to that lies in the qualitative difference between decrees that encourage violent acts against individuals and those that seek to influence large scale activity such as voting. The former can be committed by lone wolves and are, therefore, far more likely to occur than the latter in the presence of a fatwa.

Regardless, there has to be no room for such decrees in a constitutional republic. If the supreme text of the state has to be worth its name, such decrees must only come out of the legislative, judicial and executive institutions of the state that exercise sovereignty delegated to them by the Pakistani people.

For the ruling party and the silent majority whose mandate it represents, however, the foregoing ideals remain unattained.

One of the factors that explains this difference between constitutional and legal framework for exercise of political power as it exists on paper and as it gets practised in the proverbial corridors of power is the political party system of Pakistan.

PML-N’s own fault lines highlight how mainstream parties remain structured as loose networks of electables who come from the all too familiar socio-economic classes (industrialists, merchants and traders, agriculturalists, etc) that constitute the Gramscian historic bloc of Pakistan’s contemporary social order.

Amid the ongoing crisis, a handful of PML-N lawmakers from central Punjab districts have made headlines for announcing to hand over their resignations to the caretaker of the Sial Sharif shrine. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah’s visit to the caretaker will apparently determine what these lawmakers eventually end up doing. These electables belong to families that have controlled electoral politics in their constituencies for several generations based on their control over economic resources like agricultural land, industry or commerce. The narrative peddled by these lawmakers in talk shows in the past two days is diametrically opposed to the narrative of some of the key PML-N leaders in the federal cabinet. The latter have issued some of the most progressive statements to have emerged from the country’s political leadership in the emergent situation. For example, speaking on the floor of the House recently, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal told the former law minister that his religious belief was a matter between him and the Almighty, and he did not need to explain it to anyone else.

Unlike Ahsan, the central Punjab lawmakers want the Punjab law minister to publicly affirm his religious beliefs in front of the Sial Sharif caretaker.

So long as the mainstream parties continue to rely upon electables, they will have to accommodate the latter’s concerns in their public policies frequently at the cost of their manifestos or of the will of those occupying party or government offices.

Since countering religious bigotry, intolerance, or extremism is going to be possible only as a result of successful implementation of certain policies regarding the role of religion in public life, PML-N or any other mainstream party that aspires to do so will necessarily have to remove from its ranks politicians whose worldview has little place for moderation, tolerance, and pluralism. For these set of values to reflect in public policies, the latter will need to be blind to religious difference. That is, there can be no room in our public policies vis-à-vis religion for discrimination on the basis of [religious] beliefs, or for the need to publicly declare one’s [religious] beliefs.

While all Muslims may believe in the Finality of Prophet-hood, no Muslim can be required under the secular law of the land to keep affirming and reaffirming this belief publicly. So long as we cannot reach a point where this preceding statement can guide our religious policies, our plans for countering bigotry will remain ineffective at best and hypocritical at worst.

Published in Daily Times, November 30^th 2017.