Daily Times

In order to better understand these vultures let us see how the bazaaris are viewed historically. Nikki Keddie, in his book Roots of Revolution (on Iran), writes: “ Ulema (mullahs) and bazaaris often belonged to the same families (light weight social backgrounds); much ulema income came from levies paid mainly by bazaaris. The guilds often celebrated religious or partly religious ceremonies for which services of the ulema were needed (like the charities, mosques, trusts and dastarkhans of our robber barons), and piety and religious observance were among the signs of bazaar standing or leadership. Even today respectable bazaar shopkeepers are often addressed as ‘hajji’ whether or not the speaker knows if the addressee has made a pilgrimage.”
Another description of bazaaris by a foreigner in Tehran in 1994: “ A fat guy with meaty hands and fingers like kebabs, with gold rings on them. He sits in his shop and sips tea. He trades (and swindles). He makes a lot of money and he prays several times a day. He comes home at night to a big, expensive house with nothing of taste in it where he has a wife to slave for him.” See what the Iranians themselves had to say: “The bazaari is a businessman, his idea of religion is different from that of a cleric. The bazaari is willing to bend the rules of religion for the sake of finance, a bazaari will say to himself ‘I am a man of God who prays very often. A religious man like me would never lie.’ Because the bazaari is religious, he believes he is always right.” How close to the way our bazaaris esteem themselves.
Irresistible Kaplan made an amazing observation followed by a forecast that is worth noting. He says the new-age bazaaris in Muslims states are dark, rootless, master monopolists and then he asks a question: “Was the 21st century to see the implosion of political Islam and the rise of the Islamic bazaar state?” (The Ends Of The Earth by Robert D Kaplan).
The Arab Spring in the Middle East has already degenerated into just such a thing, while Pakistan is engaged in a mortal combat with these bazaaris and can succumb to them, in the not too distant future, if we let the bazaaris in power run vicious metros through our nation’s soul and drill monstrous concrete pillars into its wobbly body. The most worrisome specimens of the bazaari gang are those who have been able to graft into the musky mullah legion to further their vile agenda. Egypt’s sub-proletariat Ikhwan are just such an example, which is why they are so dangerous and are the core doctrinaires of modern Islamic terrorism. It could not be a coincidence that when late President Nasir began to prosecute the Ikhwan in Egypt, the Qutbs fled to Saudi Arabia where they groomed a celebrated student called Osama bin Laden among others. The Ikhwan was set up in Egypt in 1929. Now we have Morsi once again forging the same alliances and kicking off similar destabilising shockwaves into the Egyptian state structure (not that Sisi is any better).
Discussion of certain leading brands of bazaaris in the Muslim world must help identify surprising similarities with our home grown ones. Notice their deep commitment to making quick and easy profit, multiplying personal assets any which way and jerky, visionless governance. They have a sickening fixation for grand and people-unfriendly projects, wasteful and heavy spending from the national treasury for the sake of temporary gains, a closed, clanish style of national decision making and no patience for spending on education, health, food security and job creation. Since they are mostly from the urban petty markets of inner Lahore, Ichra, Sialkot, Gujranwala and Faisalabad, they have a built-in revulsion for the rural. That is why they have thoughtlessly overloaded selected cities with attractive civic facilities thereby setting up a flood of rural migration to major cities. Two thirds of the total population is already there and half will be there by 2025 (UN report). This rootless rural mass in shanties will overwhelm municipal services including health, education, policing and the cities themselves. See the way Islamabad’s civic services are coming apart at the seams. The other dreadful consequence would be an eventual fall in food production and rapid depopulation of our rural areas as is already happening. The larger yields of crops that we see is not the result of extensive cultivation but a ruthless overuse of fertilisers, poisonous pesticides and excessive irrigation. Again, encouraged by these greedy men to produce cheaper raw materials for their agri-based industries.
There is an evil chain of cascading effects that had been set in motion for a long time but no one cares. Our industries, mostly owned by these bazaaris and their henchmen, along with all our city administrations are dumping their toxic industrial waste and raw city sewage directly into river waters. Our agricultural chemicals also are eventually drained into our rivers, simultaneously causing serious surface toxicity and land infertility in tandem with relentless over-cultivation. Polluted rivers charge underground aquifers with highly contaminated water causing widespread diseases. Reportedly, after independence, not a single sewage treatment plant was added to what was left by the British. We should also be one of the most determined polluters of our atmosphere and vicious enemies of our environment. This, too, has never been realised by these money-minded men.
They have never prevented or legislated against the suicidal destruction of forests, rising salinity and waterlogging in our agricultural lands, control of excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides, and devastating discharge of untreated industrial waste and emissions. Brick lining of irrigation channels to prevent water logging and helping the rural population to get quality education, health, electricity, jobs and justice closer home do not figure in their cash register priorities. They take a strange psychopathic pride in promising motorways and metro bus projects to equally dumb provincial colleagues but the provision of clean drinking water to citizens has been literally outsourced to Nestle, so to say and genuine medicines to World Health Organisation (WHO). Our population is exploding, the country has become polio intensive and has been disgracefully placed under international travel sanctions. Hepatitis C (close to 10 million infected in Punjab alone), tuberculosis, kidney failure and gastro-intestinal diseases are becoming epidemics but one has hardly ever heard any of them speak about these deadly public hazards with any urgency or sustained focus.
Unthinkable food adulteration, a torrent of fake medicines and total absence of protective or preventive security to the citizens is driving men sick and neurotic. The whole nation is becoming a psychic mob but that does not move them at all. Solid public welfare projects will earn them the peoples’ gratitude only, in which they are not interested as there is neither cash profit nor applause. Flashy and grandiose projects with hefty budgets offering opportunities for kickbacks and nauseating self-projection through huge banners caress their base egos and provide delusions of sterile glory, until mugged by reality.
Punjab is the nest of our leading bazaaris. Just a glimpse of their latest budget is enough to show where their priorities lie. Clean drinking water: Rs 10 billion, flood affectees: Rs 20 billion and the Orange Train for sight seeing in Lahore: Rs 120 billion. If Lahoris want their children to live a long and healthy life, they should refuse to accept this latest monster and instead insist on sewage and factory emissions’ treatment plants, clean air and a pollution free environment. Incidentally, Hudiara Nallah would need to be blocked right up to the border if the Indians do not see reason. It has been pumping extremely poisonous, slushy industrial effluent from East Punjab through the heart of Lahore right into River Ravi, since before 1982 as I know. You may also like to visit Mahmud Booty Bund sewage outlet where Lahore’s untreated sewage has been discharged into River Ravi for the last 20 years.
(Concluded)

The writer is a retired brigadier of the
Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com