Daily Times

Pakistani society has many ills but the more significant one, perhaps, is the deep driven and widespread malaise of social acceptance of pity and the privilege under a false but profitable premise of the need to maintain a social equilibrium regardless of the grave misconduct or willful impingement mostly by the privileged. This ruse of social equilibrium actually translates into concessions and undue remissions to the licentious errant but seldom to the disconnected and resource less defaulter. Let’s then try and unravel this enormous ambiguity or rather our socio- administrative duplicity.

Pity and privilege are two opposite sounding terms but in fact have become dissimilar twin thanks mainly to our social engineering genius. Privilege is normally taken as an entitlement, a right or a part of the package of an important assignment, belonging to or born into an influential family or being part of a powerful group. This entails certain aristocratic or class obligations like being a kind of a role model, impartiality in dealings , carrying one’s weight ,optics of élan and appropriate leadership. Pity on the other hand is extended by the privileged ,well placed, powerful and those around to a person in a difficulty beyond his power and capacity, mostly to a wretched destitute. Not as a right or due but as a measure of assured self elegance from a high position of remote superiority, in most cases.

It may be noted that as long as the wretch does not rebel and the entitled does not err, the two notions or shall we say two streams of our social channel flow together smoothly. The calm is disrupted when the resource less and the pitied react violently and rock the social equilibrium the way it happened in Imperial France or Royal Russia during their revolutions. Normally in such cases the state reacts with greater violence, bloodshed takes place and a lot of misery is inflicted before order is restored which in other words means the cycle of misery and pity is reestablished. Perfectly understandable and expected as rabble is not allowed to impede smooth functioning of a structured society and a state. Most states have fairly elaborate laws on the subject which are normally applied with a great sense of rectitude and official purpose.

These escape hatch motivations have various shades and hues to smoke screen the real intent like immunity, chivalry among equals, poor honorable man, a small misstep and what not

But what happens when the privileged and the powerful err or deliberately breach the trust and responsibility placed in them by the people, the country and by God’s contractors on earth ;the pulpit. This is where a serious dichotomy of approach, law and popular sentiment arises, of which popular sentiment is far less blameworthy. Courts, deep state and those who hold them in awe join hands to either save or spare the errant and dilute the application of the same law which was so ruthlessly applied to the rebellious wretch. There is an elaborate web of catchy considerations and charitable sentiments created since centuries of elitist rule to shield them from just such an iron grip of law.

These escape hatch motivations have various shades and hues to smoke screen the real intent like immunity, chivalry among equals, poor honorable man, a small misstep and what not. Then the laws have been designed in such a manner as to provide him relief during prosecution and sentence both. This intent is concealed deep under volumes of lengthy, circuitous but brilliant arguments of jurisprudence about whys and what’s of the whole legal manipulation. The fact of the matter is that while the privileged can literally get away with murder the poor la miserable’ will be jailed for stealing half a loaf of bread. Quite strangely religions have also tended to favor the rich and the entitled like let’s say Diyat (blood money).We have seen this concession being grossly misused in Pakistan again and again.

Most dishonorable has been the fairly recent case of the day light murder of a Quetta Traffic Police constable on duty by the drunken looking MPA and the way he pressed his family influence, money and coercion into pressurizing the poor man’s family agree to blood money. The other despicable example has been the wobbly legged or may be approval with a wink to let a convict like Nawaz Sharif exit the country upon a worthless piece of Rs 50.00 paper knowing clearly that he never meant to honor his undertaking to return. This is an outstanding example of the unholy collusion between the system, the courts and the political leadership in a conspiratorial criminal huddle against the state and people of Pakistan ,to let off a habitual liar and a convict both. Not a brow was raised because they were members of the privilege and power club. The list is long awfully embarrassing.

Pity is the right of the miserable whether in being, in agitation or in rebellion but not that of the privileged for the willful breach of trust and responsibility. We have to discard damaging and misplaced charitable notions when dealing with premeditated dereliction by the men and women in authority, power and influence. As a rule, a person who accepts privileges of his station as his right forfeits proportionate scale of benevolence or pity when found delinquent by law. This is where privilege and pity face each other as dissimilar twin and must not be mixed to let the hyena run away with the kill. Popular verdict and the law must first strip the men of their regal robes so to say, and then throw their maximum weight upon these delinquent men for their double crime. That is betraying the trust placed in them and despoiling the space provided to them by the people. A notable example of this principle was seen when a year or so ago GHQ sentenced Lt Gen Javed Iqbal to 14 years’ rigorous imprisonment and Brig Rizwan to death for serious dereliction of duty.

Now what space is this which we talk about having been despoiled? It is not the physical but the moral space and space in time which such men are guilty of wrecking. This moral space or cognitive domain is extensive, lasting and more important, and deserves a bit more discussion in order to determine the main destroyers of our fairy meadows. This domain by and large includes matters of faith(mullah), governance (political leadership), nation building (educationists), economic wellbeing (development planners), sense of security and peace (LEAs and courts) and finally defense against aggression(military).We seem to have been regrettably shortchanged by these actors to varying degrees during different phases of our national life. Sometimes individually, the other times in tandem or simultaneously. The more worrisome thing about this morbid environment is that there is little apparent inclination to introspect and do the course correction except by a few before the Titanic hits the iceberg or the sails drop in Bermuda Triangle. Meanwhile vultures have already begun to perch over the bare branches of the dirty old stump anticipating a feast.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army