It has been a busy time for Pakistan. A convicted murderer was executed, an Oscar was won, and a drought in Thar continued to kill. The reactions to these three events are telling. Mumtaz Qadri’s execution was met with rioting and rage against the establishment. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Oscar-win resulted in a mix of jubilation and indignation, while the continued drought in Thar yielded none of the sound and fury of the other two events.
Qadri attained national attention when he shot and killed the then governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. His defence for having contravened the most basic element of his job description was his belief that the Taseer’s stance against the archaic and much-abused blasphemy laws was un-Islamic. This piety and willingness to murder won Qadri a vast fan base, with many lawyers eager to represent him pro bono, happily ignoring the fact that murder is a capital offence. Qadri’s supporters have long held him as a defender of the faith, a distorted version that uses the language of hate to enforce its ugly will. His killing brought thousands of irate mourners to the streets, with scores dying in revenge bombings. In Pakistan as elsewhere, some lives are more valuable than others.
In the same week, Pakistanis weighed in on Obaid-Chonoy’s choices. She was accused of playing to a western audience, selecting stories that reinforce stereotypes about Pakistan. “This portrays a negative image of the country,” moaned the Internet. “Why don’t you write about drone attacks?” suggested other armchair patriots. Of the innumerable problems besetting Pakistan, the selection of a foreign one speaks to a deep-seated need to play the victim. While true in some cases perhaps, the eagerness to play martyr implies that we are powerless in the face of outside interference. It is a refusal to ownership.
This approach to problems feeds into the response to natural disasters where no external party can be blamed. A drought in Tharpakar district — one of the few areas where Hindus and Muslims reside in harmony — has continued to slowly starve that area’s denizens. In its third consecutive year, the drought has already felled a large number of children, with the overall toll climbing above two hundred. The national response to this has been silence. Ministerial denials of drought, accusations against media’s inflation of casualty figures (particularly of children), followed by the sound of crickets, as the majority prefers to venerate a murderer and shame a film-maker.
These responses speak volumes about our national character: we are driven by hate more than anything else. There is an overarching sense of injustice that impels some to rant on social media, and brings others out onto the streets. There is always a foreign hand to blame for our ills — shadowy groups controlling secular elites to destroy the faith from within. Qadri’s disciples see themselves as warriors, fighting for their religion, would-be jihadis. In actuality they are fighting against progress, against modernity, and against time, with its inexorable march forward. Qadri and his ilk, and those who spread vitriol against the documentation of criminality rather than the crimes themselves, are destined to lose.
Groups that can allow innocents to die without so much as a murmur, who turn their collective gaze away from not just Thar, but the myriad daily tragedies that result from poverty, the environment, and custom, cannot claim to speak for a religion built on tolerance. Their silence on matters temporal, and embrace of a narrow understanding of the spiritual, coupled with an eagerness to dispatch into the ether those who disagree, reveals the hypocrisy that underlies the most vocal and angry parts of the Pakistani populace.
There are voices to counter this one-sided narrative, and they are slowly growing louder. Voices that demand action while spurring change. Groups that proffer aid to their fellow citizenry when the state fails, as it does all too often. They may not march in the streets (or at least not often), because they are busy attempting to right the wrongs they see. They build hospitals and schools, open shelters, provide food, water, and medicines. These individuals focus on building rather than destroying, on hope rather than hate. Because, like Martin Luther King Jr., they understand that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”
The writer is a freelance columnist