Daily Times

Any state, which stifles criticism becomes totalitarian. The criticism ought to be healthy; this statement is a convenient bulwark where totalitarianism finds its final refuge.Who will be thatMr Clean, an above board judge, a phenomenon unique to fascism – where the idea of a charismatic leader is already performed in the liberalistic celebration of a gifted economic leader, a born executive (Marcuse) – eligible to decide what is healthy and what is inimicalto a society already in decadence?If such a superman of Nietzsche exists, the queryof Quiscustodietipsos custodies (who will guard the guardians) asked by Roman satirist Juvenile still remains pertinent.

History has proved that the experience of creating a religious state has always terminated/culminated in a calamity, but every calamity has ended up into an opportunity for those who unleashed such traumatic experiments on the hapless people. As if states of Israel and Pakistan were not enough, the creation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo were the latest examples. Nothing will be more distant fromreality if the process of Balkanizationis given a false dimension based on ethnicity. In ethnicity, Bosnians are hardly any different from the Serbs or the Croats.Yet for the US hegemony, Yugoslavia was sliced by religious axe disguised as ethnic one.

Whereas every effort was afoot to declare Islam as the future enemy, on the other hand, imperialism was carving more states in the name of the same religion, a paradox having a method about it. The statue of Bill Clinton in Kosovo speaks volumes of thedehumanisation of thought people go through while serving the nefarious designs of the superpower whose sole objective is to maintain its domination ofthe world. Don’t people of the Balkan know for a fact that the corporations are plundering the mineral wealth after turning this region into a battlefield? Anyone in doubt must listen to Robert Bier, an ex-CIA official, tasked to oversee this brutal division and human massacre in this region.

The consequent hatred and alienation among the people who once were friendly neighbourswere the mirror reflection of what happened during thepartition era of the subcontinent. The country dissected in the name of religion ‘a moth-eaten state’ as its father of nation attributed it, suffered from infantile neurosis where religious paranoia took over the sanity if some were left by mere chance.

Jinnah’s speech delivered on 11 August was not to become a balm for the bruised hearts,left with lethal scars of partition. The damage had already been done. Pakistan was never a sovereign state and how could it be? Adominion state having all-powerful Governor General at the helms of affairs cannot be sovereign. General Akintic accepted asthe combined chief of staff for both India and Pakistan, gave direct orders toGeneral Gracey without seeking any consent from Jinnah.There was no loss of grace when Quaid in his oath attributed his fealty to King George V. Those who were living in a mirage ofchange had to face the worst nightmare of their lives.

Despite these ‘secular’overtures,the wounds of partition kept bleeding. Pakistan kept leaning to the right,towards the religious abyss. The populist premier who snatched power from the jaws of the majority party by dividing the country with the help of Pretorian-guards into two separate halves drew the first blood when seeking a political mileage, he cleaved the Muslims by excommunicating a sect from the orbit of Islam. The voice, which was selling socialism, bangedreligion into ears and minds of the masses.The “consummate superman” a “projection of the masses turned out to be a King Kong than Caesar Borgia” (Horkheimer).

To assume power directly, Pakistani generals used the religious card as a convenient tool to attain legitimacy.However, after initial success this always backfires. The dominant interest cannot rule through coercionat least not for long. Hegemony demands not only a false pretension of identifying oneself with the faith and needs of the people but to train the people to identify their demands, and needs according to the requirements of the ruling class as well. Pandering the panacea of religionand hatred do not work against the stark economic realities. The demise of theEastern wing had long buried the so-called ‘Two Nation theory’; if at all, it was any theory, and not an outright opportunism to seek immediate benefits.

One cannot help but blame the Indian National Congress for yielding to short-term gains. Even Marxist swallowed the Hobbesian pill of religion. Failing miserably to understand the British design of using the partition as the bulwark against the fear of communism, they too toed the thoughtless Soviet line, whose only mission was survival even at the cost of detent, which meant leaving all the resistance against the imperialist powers. How could the division of the working class and that too in the name of religion have helped the cause of socialism?

During partition, the aimless bloodbath of nearly a million people, which was not the consequence of any mass struggle for a just system, was bound to remain unhealed at least for a couple of generations. The turning point of history was the successful explosion of “Islamic nuke”. The bomb squeezed millions of dollars from the exchequer leaving the people surviving literally “on eating grass” as the populist leader demanded them as a sacrifice for a ‘holy’ cause to be used for the most unholy purpose. Akin to India, Pakistan too became a starving superpower. Pakistan apparently became invincible, but no nation is impregnable unless its people are prepared to guard its boundaries. The examples of the US and to a certain extent USSR were revelations. The US did not defeat Japan by annihilating the people since historically Japan had almost surrendered much before theHolocaust blew the humanity to bits. In the USSR, it was the Red Army, which conquered Berlin and saved the world from Fascism but once the same proletariat lost the balance of force against the bureaucracy no nuke was required to bring such a gigantic ‘union’ down.

To add feather into its cap, Pakistani judiciary too has stepped in the fray of saving this country from the presumed infidels.This is the real ‘nuke’. The Jihadi culture was the continuation of the evils that the men in civil and khaki, supported by the objective conditions did to this state of the Pure.It seems that in blasting this nuke on the masses,all power-structures are hand in glove. It is certainly not amazing. After all, this was one of the retired chief justices who ferociously contested a case to save a bloodletting beast, the one who massacred the governor in cold-blood. The unresolved conundrum, which keeps the sagacious quarters bewildering, isabout the dubiousnature and intentions of the power structure. Are we living in the era of Pinochet? To guard their own interests, thePretorianguards areimposing hackneyed ideology eclipsed by the history. The policy of ‘divide- et -impera’, which benefited the masters, is proving equally successful for the incumbent rulers. The possibility that the contradictory disintegrating human being would shed the fetters imposed by the system and cast away the system itself appears to have gone in vain. Is it the time for the rebel “to revive the desperate laughter and cynical defiance of the fool to expose the deeds” of those who govern through Machiavellian’s methods?

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com