Lately, the question that is most feared by a Pakistani residing abroad is that of his nationality. What translates as the ‘Land of the Pure’ in the local vernacular translates as something very unpleasant in other languages. A small prop of the mouth and our local simpleton becomes notorious, something vile, something to be feared. Green passports are preferred expired and dual nationality serves as a second chance to life but not to those who have no option.
I trace my steps back to my vacation in Europe when I was a child, when people did not know of Pakistan, and only for the sake of geographical description we used to force the words ‘country next to India’ from our mouths. To the world, India is still that exotic land where the Ganges flows and cultures melt in a pot of population. We, however, are more popular now and are known for manufacturers of all things wrong. Meet Pakistan, the Third World country that is a First World problem. If the heavens were not that far off, we would have heard laughter emanating from above.
Our cynical saint of Karachi, Ardeshir Cowasjee spent the most important years of his life fighting social evils with pen and in the law courts; when age finally caught up with him, he allowed disillusionment to take over and withdrew from the battlefield, pleading tiredness. During his last days, he conveyed to me that the young people should never give up and rid this land of the corrupt. Regretfully, I never got time to ask him how.
Mr Cowasjee’s young people, however, much impeded by the natural barriers to participation in our far from democratic structure, have closed temporal ranks behind the PTI chieftain Imran Khan. PTI jalsas (rallies) are very interesting in themselves; a sequence of unknown party workers deliver impassionate speeches, each leaving the other behind in painting Imran Khan as the second coming of the Messiah (what I term as ‘Jesus Marketing’). Then ‘Kaptaan’ Sahib himself shows up and the crowds throng with this reverent lust. We become cognizant of who has made a profitable career by black-marketing the tickets of Bambino Cenima and who is the gymnast-in-chief of our political arena. All questions regarding Kaptaan Sahib’s stance on Muttahida Quami Movement are ducked, while the Taliban remain his special grey area.
Today, Kaptaan Sahib still stands as Pakistan’s most legitimate leader but his varying stance on the Taliban has hurt him. This nation can suffer to be broken into a thousand shards, but none would be willing to carry the gory colours of the Taliban flag. As friend Sri Lanka would teach, guerillas and terrorists are not negotiated with; a negotiation is but the beginning of your own departure from power. Why he believes that these mercenaries are not beyond redemption is best known to him alone. Kaptaan Sahib should realise that he cannot always be right, or the IRI surveys would in all honesty, continue to oblige him in kind: a 22 percent drop in popularity is massive, data outliers or no data outliers.
I have found the world categorised into three kinds of people: those who live in the pure white, those who live in the pure black, and the struggling ones who live on the borders, swaying the days back and forth. Religion and ideologies serve as decent geographical confines for people, but then there is that phrase that takes them everywhere: the greater good. Kaptaan Sahib is the greater good man, who believes in the sacrifices of one good to achieve another and perhaps that explains his silence with regard to Muttahida, a future coalition contingency perhaps? How far his supporters will believe in these relatively measured sacrifices is another story.
Kaptaan Sahib has indeed come far from his days of political penury, but he is still alone and will be for a very long time to come. Political alliances do not come so easy, as rich as he is in morality and as equipped he is with standards so scrupulous. The curse of Kaptaan is that he appeals to the rational young and the seasoned educated, while the Nawabs of Raiwind and the Barons of Sindh own votes, banked on ignorance, blind loyalty and fear. They can say their will and do how their please, without a second consequence or a third man’s difference, not Kaptaan Sahib.
With opponents so entrenched and powerful, contending in a nation so replete with cynicism, Kaptaan Sahib cannot afford these unforced errors. Age sets in fast, his young grow old, and the victory march seems so far away. His perseverance is worthy of many acknowledgements, but does the Kaptaan have what the last hundred metres take?
Dear Ardeshir never lived to vote, kept a thorough check on fundamentalism his whole life, but in a greater good measure of his own, came across a new leader too.
The writer is studying at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and can be reached at [email protected]