The ordinary person in Pakistan lives an unfathomably distressful life. Ghalib quite aptly puts it when he says, “Subh karna sham ka lana hai ju-e shir ka” (From “Shirin and Farhad,” surviving from night to day is like carving a path through mountains to bring forth a river of milk). As the scorching June sun approaches, so does the internship season. In pursuit of one such endeavour, I set forth on a sunny morning. Before reaching my destination, I needed two mandatory photocopies of my ID card. It turns out 7 AM was a poor time for such an errand, a fact realised while frantically traversing the serene, morning-time Canal and Mall Roads. Heaven bless the spirited old gentleman who was exiting Lawrence Garden after his morning walk. He astutely guided me that, at this early hour, the sole remedy for my consternation lay in the vicinity of the Education Board.
As my copies were being printed, an old lady appeared at the store asking for a “Darkhwast-Navees” (application-writer). The distress of her appearance was only overshadowed by the gloom of her expression. The shopkeeper asked her what she needed it for. Her murky face turned sombre as she said, “Mai CP de pesh hona ae” (I want to appear before the CP). Her wizened face appeared weathered by the harshness of the heat and strenuosity of her unfortunate and unsolicited circumstances. Everyone there was speaking in Punjabi, but there was something different about her accent. It was the accent they use in my hometown, Nankana Sahib, and places like Okara and Jhang, by the bank of the River Ravi. I asked the lady where she was from, and she narrated the entire anecdote to me.
Even though we ostensibly live under sovereign rule, the agents of whom fail not to advertise their faces on every available billboard, for the penurious, life is still what Hobbes describes in Leviathan as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
This old lady belonged to Hujra (Distt. Okara, Depalpur Tehsil). She had travelled yesterday and spent the night on the pavement near Ganga Ram Hospital so she could promptly reach the Police Office the next day. Then she said, “Putr mai barya thawa te zaleel hoi aa, main kaess dassya ae ke CPO de pesh ho, ae pore Pakastan da thana ae” (I’ve been desperately trying at different places; someone asked me to appear before the CPO. They told me it was the entire Pakistan police station). The bureaucratic red tape and administrative lethargy had caused great affliction to the lady. She had appeared before the RPO, who sent her to the DPO, who in turn sent her to the DSP, who had done nothing. It was surprising that someone unable to draft an application knew all these fancy police terms, but perhaps time had taught her. The lady had tried the IG office too, but they just wouldn’t let her in. Hopeless and helpless, she was trying her last bets as someone had told her that she should go to the CPO (probably meaning the CCPO office nearby on Queen’s Road) or CCD, as only they could help her.
She got her application written and held it like a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak time. Even though we ostensibly live under sovereign rule, the agents of whom fail not to advertise their faces on every available billboard, for the penurious, life is still what Hobbes describes in Leviathan as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Law acts as this abstract and elite concept, totally evasive of the lower echelons of society. It is this cagey and equivocative thing, inscrutable to the poor and illiterate, hence acting as a force against them. It acts as an agent, solidifying and systemically institutionalising the very same evils it was meant to counter. The state apparatus meant to deliver justice is inaccessible to those who need it the most. Even by government estimates, of which one cannot help but be dubious when quoting, almost 40% of the population remains illiterate, and even the standard of the majority of those falling in the literate category is no secret. In view of such actualities, the government and the courts seriously need to reconsider the continual usage of these colonial-era regularities and formalities. Law will remain a distant, inaccessible theory, playing its pretentiously just game while exploiting the indigent, until and unless it is understandable to them.
The system, the courts, and the government need to stop acting as if they operate in a vacuum. Each and every step they take has gargantuan consequences for tens of millions of people. This obsession with procedure is daunting for a common person and actively discourages them from seeking these avenues. These abstruse procedural necessities and herculean administrative and legal protocols are exactly what Kafka personifies as the “gatekeeper” in “Before the Law.” He talks about this ambiguity of law, where everyone has an individual experience with it, and for the majority in Pakistan, this experience is usually marked by distress and dismay.
While ostensibly living in modern times with the greatest awareness about human rights and dignity, we live in a time where the Chief Justice of India calls young activists cockroaches, and Pakistanis, well, leave them, for they heed no one’s attention enough to even consider them a nuisance. The solution to our problems is not to create new parallel apex courts or transfer judges across high courts, further complicating affairs, but rather it is important to simplify these matters, making them legible to the common person, who is the one most affected by it. Instead of trying to open the door of justice for everyone, a better approach could be to deliver it at their doorsteps. Not that nothing good comes out of the current system, but does the seldom good justify the perpetual injustice? One cannot help but ponder upon that.
The writer can be reached at: me.ahmed.sultan @gmail.com.