Daily Times

As a lawyer my head hangs in shame at what my colleagues were up to at Punjab Institute of Cardiology. It is as simple as this: Central to the profession of law is the idea that you should only use legal and constitutional means. That does not mean that you never protest but the protest should never entail breaking the law. The so-called gentlemen ceased to be lawyers when they attacked a hospital, something that is not even done during war. It does not matter who started it. The fact is that a lawyer just does not break the law. A lawyer can never be an anarchist. A lawyer does not even engage in civil disobedience. A key example of this is the founder of this nation who we have reduced to a picture on the wall. He never even broke colonial laws that he was working to change. As a lawyer he understood that when law ceases to exist, there is only anarchy. The purpose of law is to protect life, liberty, property and the religious belief from the mob. Pakistan has never done that and in essence it is a lawless state.

The truth is that Pakistan is precisely in the kind of anarchy today that William Dalrymple speaks of in his wonderful book “The Anarchy” which is about the 18th Century Indian subcontinent plagued by competing interests. Pakistan too has multiple power centers who instead of working like institutions of the same government are often involved in intrigue and complex power plays- country be damned. It is always about institutional interests. Then you have the professional castes. Lawyers think they are a caste or a “biradari” rather than professional officers of the court. Similar thinking prevails amongst doctors and so on and so forth. I dare say that our military also assumes itself to be one. The much maligned caste system of ancient India was also about professions and the power play between them. The Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Sudras and the untouchables were all organized around professions. It is a tragic reduction for the country that was supposed to be a rebellion against that age-old tradition which exists as a cultural lag for us.

In this state of anarchy the minorities are the worst sufferers. Almost buried in the lawyer-doctor stand off is the story of a young assistant commissioner who was forced to repent after a mob was baying for her blood. Her crime? She had mentioned Ahmadis as a persecuted community in Pakistan and spoken for their human rights. This is tribalism and majoritarianism of the worst kind. Given our treatment of minorities, is it any wonder that majoritarian fascists in India and elsewhere use it an excuse to bring about bad laws like the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 in India, which now awaits the assent by the Indian president.

Whether a lawyer heeds the call to strike or not is ultimately a matter of his and her conscience and to be made to strike by force goes against the very idea of protest

This rise of professional caste system, tribalism and violent majoritarianism leading to the mobs threatening life liberty and property of individual citizens is not just the lack of education. This much should patently clear after the events at PIC. A clear timeline for this exists since Pakistan banned student unions. Student Unions were a forum for the airing of grievances by students in a democratic manner. Since they were banned in 1984, you have seen an increase in ethnic and sectarian violence on our campuses. It started in Karachi but the fire has engulfed all of Pakistan. The lawyers and doctors of today are products of universities and educational institutions, which did not have student unions. All they have learnt is to achieve their ends through violence and blackmail. This then translates into professional associations, which aim at disruption rather than forwarding the goals of professional development.

Returning the issue of lawyers, the politics of the bar have been dominated by groups that are more interested in personal interests rather than any real benefit for their members. What happened at the PIC was partly because of the ongoing election campaign. Even the more moderate and cooler heads got swept aside or were forced to join the fray. It was equally upsetting to see members not just of Pakistani bars but those had been called to the bar in England and Wales engaging in this violent protests. Many lawyers love to put the prefix barrister before their name or claim to be a barrister otherwise but when it comes to following the ethics of the English bar, they are found wanting. This is because technically they are not practicing barristers and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the Bar Standards Board in London. Had they been though, they would all have been disbarred for bringing the profession into disrepute. It is one of the core duties of the Ethics handbook that they have breached. Pakistani bar also follows a similar code of conduct but it is seldom applied. This is because of the regulatory capture. For example, the Bar Councils have no locus standing in politics but are there to regulate professional conduct of lawyers. Yet because the Bar Council members are elected in the same way, they too are forced to bend the knee to popular sentiment.

We saw the clearest example of this when 60 lawyers were ousted from the Islamabad Bar Association with the recommendation that their licenses be cancelled. Their crime? They dared to appear before the High Courts on the day Islamabad Bar Association had called for a strike. A strike is a matter of conscience. Whether a lawyer heeds the call to strike or not is ultimately a matter of his and her conscience and to be made to strike by force goes against the very idea of protest. Doctors also strike (and may be they shouldn’t because they are an essential service) but imagine never has the now defunct PMDC ever been asked to cancel their medical licenses for not heeding a call to strike. My humble appeal to the Bar Councils is to instead of focus on reprimanding and disbarring those lawyers alone who have engaged in acts of violence.

I know that by writing this article, I may well have invited the wrath of the powers that be in the legal profession, but I feel that it is the clearest duty on my part as a lawyer to point out where we have gone wrong. I believe in the ideals of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and therefore I cannot hold my silence on the issue.

The writer is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan