Daily Times

Every change, Cesar Aira says, is a change in the topic. But the distinguished writer probably missed the point that in a world where piety reigns supreme even the topic refuses to change; what changes is the tone that outstrips the taste. When the economic unrest forces the ruling class to change, it begins to flog the dead horse — the issues that have least to do with the welfare of a common citizen. The theme is so blatantly obvious that even the ordinary prudence can comprehend the point behind this flogging; but the majority, which has subjugated itself to a boundless apparatus, constituted for itself and has willfully fettered into, to embrace the un-freedom as a second nature, fails to identify it. Hence, the topic remains the same.

A country facing the Pandora’s Box containing all ills — extreme poverty, illiteracy, terrorism, economic and moral bankruptcy — needs serious reflection on the gravity of its condition. How unfortunate it can be that finding itself at the verge of being declared as a terrorist state it embroils itself in impertinent affairs such as the projection of law of blasphemy, the restoration of the redundant primitive era laws and guarding a nonexistent threat to a religion practised by the 98 % people of the state. Is religion that vulnerable? If so, is it worthwhile to defend something so fragile that can only survive through an outright coercion or by judicial decrees? Christianity one of the largest religions of the world that burnt the heretics alive finally succumbed to the reason. In the 21st century, no religion can hope to survive the irrationality of technological rationality. Even as a Hobbesian pill, it is of little avail.

The failure to learn from the history is the biggest tragedy; those who do not learn apt to repeat their failures. Another perplexing decree from a court that demands every individual to declare unequivocally his/her faith prior to attaining any job in public departments, indicates our indifference to learning from history. It is an outright violence of opinion that helps fathom the depth of opinion-maker’s innate violence. Not the qualities and potentials of an individual but his religion will define his eligibility for the job. It is a brazen attempt to discriminate on flimsy grounds; nothing can be more unreasonable than this. One’s belief is a private matter, no one not even the Papal regime has the right to inquire about it because such an act is the inquisition and not information.

When Marx wrote the theory of value, he knew that he was expounding the biggest secret of capital, which would explain every human relation living under its mode of production.  Akin to the theory of value, the question of defence of religion in the guise of blasphemy has a two-fold character. It too has a use value that is why a non-issue such as this has not only kept alive but emphasized on the daily basis lest it loses its razor edge. Its exchange value has never lost its significance; the careerists have built their futures by its sale.

We too are under occupation, the occupation of forces of the status quo that demand that we perish in the darkness of a medieval era

The crop of hatred, ignorance and status quo sown by the ruling class, the army including the judiciary —  — a handmaiden apparatus of the Pretorian guards in the underdeveloped world — is what the people of Pakistan are reaping. The repentance, the confession, the guilt do not alter the reality if the folly is pursued with same zeal and zest. Thousands of youngsters educated by the madaris lacking any scientific base, relying on Aristotelian metaphysics armed with the concept of Jihad have already become redundant in a society based on technological rationality. They have left to the wilderness of the world to kill or die for a cause they themselves are unclear. They have become Schopenhauer’s ‘biped’, ‘tossed backwards and forward between pain and boredom’.

In an antagonist society where human is identified by the monetary status, Wilhelm Reich says it is person’s social position “that decides whether he will sublimate his sadism as a butcher, surgeon, or policeman’. The people our ruling class had chosen to guard religion come from the lumpen stratum that is why their sadism sublimates as terrorists and butchers.

Max Weber provides an excellent analysis of the role of the judiciary under capitalism. He says, ‘modern businesses… are much too sensitive to legal and administrative irrationalities. They could only come into being in the bureaucratic state with its rational laws where … the judge is more or less an automatic statute-dispensing machine, in which you insert the files together with the necessary costs and dues at the top, whereupon he will eject the judgment together with the more or less cogent reasons for it at the bottom: that is to say, where the judge’s behavior is on the whole predictable.’

Few of its best examples can be seen in the technologically developed states where judiciary towed the line best suited to the hegemonic designs. In Citizen versus FEC case, the Federal court of the US gave a free hand to the big corporation to influence the fate of predetermined elections. The notorious ban on immigration arbitrarily clamped on many Middle Eastern countries by Trump has received an endorsement from the Federal court. Who can forget the farce of 2000 US election, when the Supreme Court ruled against the recount and handed over the victory to George Bush (47.9 percent) instead of Al Gore (48.4 percent). How bizarre was the struggle between Republican Senate and President Obama on the elevation of a new judge to his position when Regan’s handpicked Judge Scalia prematurely expired with cardiac arrest. It speaks volumes about the political affiliation of the judges in a ‘free’ country. The apolitical is political.

Pakistan too has travelled a long way to win its freedom; freedom to choose all the same. There is a freedom to elect the representatives; the choice is between corrupt comprador bourgeoisie and landowning Mafia that rules by imposing slavery on the subjects. A freedom to embrace a certain version of Islam or to be lynched in full public view by the primitive version of the Nazi’s SS (Schutzstaffel). The freedom to speak and to disappear in the wee hours of the night—- to be killed or maimed by the Pretorian guards, the defenders of the geographical frontiers with additional responsibilities of defending the ideological boundaries as well. That is a bitter reality and as Sartre says, ‘the more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we could see through it’ that ‘all executioners belong to the same family’ (Camus).

In the name of judicial activism, another astonishing freedom has come to rock our boat. A new verdict demanding to declare one’s faith is the gift of the same freedom. The evil that Bhutto did is not only living after him but has plagued the middle and ruling classes as well. Hitler found his Jews, Jews have their Palestinians and the faithful their faithless. If the parliament can use its platform to decide the monopoly of religion, why cannot judiciary do the same? What Bhutto started Zia took eleven years to accomplish. When political and military as an institution had contributed to a disgusting decision of meddling with individual’s faith why would the judiciary lack behind? Adorno was succinct ‘dumbness is the objective spirit.’

Under Nazi occupation, the definition of freedom had transformed to the extent that Sartre had to reinterpret it ‘Never were we freer than under the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, and first of all our right to speak. They insulted us to our faces. … They deported us en masse. … And because of all this, we were free.’

We too are under occupation, the occupation of forces of status quo that demand us to perish in the darkness of medieval era. For Sartre secret of a man was resistance, its perils were to be shared equally and that made the resistance the true democracy, the ultimate freedom.  To attain our freedom from these primitive forces are we listening to him? Do we have the guts to stand up and tell the court we have nothing to declare but our freedom?

I have nothing to declare by my genius

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we could see through it.

love the day that escapes injustice, and return to combat having won that light.

That way of not taking the tragic seriously is not so grievous, but it helps to judge a man.

Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough

Would that you invent for me the justice that acquits everyone, except him that judges

The writer has authored books on socialism and history. He blogs at saulatnagi.wordpress.com and can be reached atsaulatnagi@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, March 21^st 2018.