Daily Times

The political vacuum led to Bonapartism. Pakistan became a state of gunrunners. If today we find ourselves hostage to the non-state armed actors, there is hardly any reason to wonder about. Partition was the key to maintaining the British hegemony in India, hence, under the banner of Islam the country was gifted to the ML, a ragtag of the middle class and the lumpen mob, having little or no historical significance. Instead of addressing the economic problems, the leaders flocked around feudal, found refuge behind faith “which means not wanting to know what is true” (Nietzsche).

Religion according to Spinoza is a “tissue of mysteries which attracts those who flatly despise reason”. By this logic, all those – including Zionism – who wanted to have a state in the name of religion, based their thought on the lack of sound reason. No wonder in political vacuum the civil-military bureaucracy of Pakistan thrived under the same logic which they made a part of a permanent policy. The very insecure state finding a hostile neighbour masquerade its fears and phobias by keeping an adventurous posture against its enemies and looked forward to the alliance with an imperialist power. From the day of its inception, its leaders left no chance begging to turn it into a client state of the US. It combated the ‘evil state’ of USSR while setting its own house ablaze. As it was not enough, to gain pelf and projection from its masters it helped trained more than fifty thousand jihadis to counter Assad in Syria as well. With such a political mindset, which shelves all the scruples which could have expected peace in a country which itself denied peace a chance. Gramsci was succinct when he stated, “the challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned”. A state addicted to illusions cannot be disillusioned even after shedding half of its country while losing the very basis of its creation, the two-nation theory.

Violence invariably becomes an integral part of a security state. In recent times, the majority of the states are afflicted with this malediction. In the US Trump’s maniac slogan of America First was preceded by many in the European countries. The UKIP’s England first, the Welder’s Holland first, Le Pen’s France first, Pauline Hanson’s Australia first and similarly the Austria first were the signs of hatred towards the cheap labour provided by the immigrants which apparently was backed and directed against Muslims. This clearly indicates the recession, which is forcing the capitalism to embrace fascism. The state merely needs to raise the slogan; the rest of the barbarity is left to the right-wing extremists. Pakistan had its moments too when a narcissist general raised the same motto, only to prove his insanity based on megalomania. After the incidence of 9/11 turning the state into an inferno, he and his fellow generals refused to budge only to show that “dumbness is an objective spirit”. The intervention in Afghanistan and Kashmir, a continuation of Zia’s legacy continued unabated, and so was the haemorrhage of the innocent citizens. Only a society “to whom death has become as different as its members, can inflict it …on innumerable people (Adorno).

In modern states, the hegemony by consent can be achieved only through mutilation of thought, making sure that reproduction of thought does not lead to an expansion of mind. Hence the self-preservation becomes a theme. An explosion here a blast there led by the system or a society which is on the verge of committing a hara-kiri leaves everyone to his own. One considers oneself fortunate not to be exploded either by the suicidal bomber or by the explosive system based on uncertainty. Even the entertainment fosters resignation. It reassures that nothing ever would change. The media does not sublimate; it represses the desires. The repetition of a folly turns the folly into a fact, which becomes just natural and appropriate. Through deception, the victim of a blast is declared a martyr is knowing fully well that neither was he employed to defend the borders of the state nor he had any intention to fight for such a futile cause.

The newscaster declares the human tragedy in the same tone as he/she describes a sex scandal. The death of humanity becomes nothing more than ordinary news, a mere weather report. The emotions behind a tragedy carry an element of sensationalism than a tinge or a tear of sorrow. Instead of reflecting upon human sufferings, the emphasis remains upon the tantrums of Trump, or upon a Panama gate scandal involving a premier whose repute was never above board, the one commanding no pedestal among the world politicians and whose political demise or survival in power is least meaningful. Isn’t it a violence perpetrated against the humanity by those who consider human life less worthy than a Shakespearean tragedy?

The market economy makes sure that its grip on the indoctrinated masses remains iron-fisted. According to Horkheimer, “Men released from the concentration camps take up the jargon of their jailors and with cold reason and mad concept (the price, as it were, of their survival) tell their story as it could not have been otherwise than it was, contending that they have not been treated so badly after all”. What can be worse than a meek submission to the perpetrators of one’s perdition? Is it masochism, or an outright violence accepted as one’s fate?

It was sometimes during Vietnam War or perhaps little later, both Janis Joplin and Rita Coolidge separately sung the famous song, which states ‘freedom another world when nothing left to lose”. In her another hit, Rita sings “this world has lost its glory, let us start a new story now…right now, there is no other time”. “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of men and women who could change the world…its truth lies in power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real” (Marcuse). One wonders if it is the time to start writing a new story by breaking the monopoly of established reality only to make freedom more meaningful.

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