“SO this is democracy?” ask a bewildered people who mistakenly expected utopia to jump out of the ballot box. “Yes, these are the joys of democracy,” smugly reply those that reject that leftover of slavery, the British parliamentary system. The bewildered don't realize that getting to any sort of utopia is a gradual learning-cleansing process that moves at its own pace. The smug don't understand that even if they are right, and even if they know which system they prefer, they cannot impose change unless they are backed by a genuine revolution. Both have to be patient and stop thinking in terms of an average human lifetime. The human organism's longevity is shorter than a societal organism's time frame. If a mentally colonized people have slavishly opted for the master's system, they must be allowed to learn the hard way, that this alien colonial system will never deliver, for it is programmed to favor that same class of toady collaborators that the British created to act as intermediaries between them and the natives - you know, Macaulay's black minstrels who are “British in every respect except for the color of their skins”? They are still happily playing that role for neo-colonialist America. Just as America cannot function without an adversary, and when there is none it creates one, slaves cannot exist without a master and find one when there is no need for one. If the smug don't have patience they should make a revolution, remembering that shortcuts like coups are not revolution. Those with their feet on the ground were hoping - and still are - that finally these elections would put us on the right track after 60 years in the wilderness. Instead, because we are still slavishly following the convoluted British system, we ended up with no one winning and parties getting more votes and less seats compared to parties getting less votes and more seats, with 70 percent of the electorate making the most important statement of the elections by not showing up and rejecting system, the parties and the politicians. Result: a proxy prime minister presiding over a coalition government of four parties with different priorities and agendas. “No problem,” we said. “It reflects both the rich diversity as well as the acute polarization of Pakistan.” Everyone was talking reconciliation after claiming to have learned from past mistakes. But now it seems that all this lovey-dovey show is on the surface and the usual backstabbing is going on below. Now we understand the meaning of that humbug, “Democracy is the best revenge.” Democracy and revenge don't go together, not even revenge against authoritarian forces that almost always are products of the failure of democracy. Only with the success and continuity of the democratic process will authoritarian forces recede. Revenge is one of the basest of human emotions. “Revenge for what?” one might well ask. If one were to consider those parties that have ever held power, one would come to the conclusion that this revenge nonsense will never end for they have all done equally vile and undemocratic things to one another, to the people and to the country during their tenures. If the politicians really want reconciliation, then it is imperative that every party indulges in introspection and critical self-analysis and comes to terms with its own undemocratic past. Otherwise the viscous revenge spiral will go on spinning on the same spot while the world moves forward and we keep getting left behind. If people like Arbab Rahim, the former chief minister of Sindh, and the septuagenarian former parliamentary affairs minister Dr. Sher Afgan Niazi did anything illegal, charge them. Take them to court. Don't lynch them like a self-righteous Ku Klux Klan mob of lawyers, politicians and party workers. If nothing is proved against them by due process, or if due process is not allowed to proceed for years, then we will be forced to come to the conclusion that they are “squeaky clean,” just as Asif Zardari has become “squeaky clean” thanks to the National Reconciliation Ordinance and that no charge was ever proved against him. If these people really are democrats, they should repeal the NRO as well as the satanic accountability law that places the onus of proof on the accused before they start righting other wrongs, real or imaginary or politically convenient. It is less the actions of the people who committed the vile acts against Arbab Rahim and Sher Afgan and more their individual and collective mindsets that worries me. I have often been asked what I mean by ‘liberal fascists' and ‘moderate extremists.' Now you know. What else would you call people who claim to be upholders of the law and purveyors of democracy but only tolerate those who agree with them and would lynch those who don't? Are these guys lawyers? Democrats? Or fascists in democrats' clothing? If the upholders of the law behave like this, what hope is there for law in the land? This is not democracy. It is revenge only. Again, one asks: revenge for what? That some people exercised their democratic right to disagree with those who are now in power? The fact is that a huge number of lawyers are members of political parties or associated with them. While everyone is passing the buck on to the “hidden hands,” those who attacked Arbab were associated with the People's Party, most of the lawyers who thrashed Niazi are said to be linked to the Nawaz League, the lawyers who protested peacefully against Niazi's thrashing belonged to MQM and the hooligan lawyers who attacked them are said to be People's Party again. Didn't Karachi bring to mind a historical event? Remember Robespierre? The guillotine? “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times”? “Let them eat cake”? that Marie Antoinette never actually said. “Take him fast to his grave”? The bourgeois revolt against the French royalty and aristocracy that started as anarchy but fuelled by Rousseau's thought became revolution? We are at the brink of a vengeful anarchy, except that it has little chance of becoming revolution, for where is our Rousseau? Actually, we also have a Book, a Book greater than Rousseau's, the greatest Book ever revealed because it is by God Himself, albeit in human language. But we are so far from our Book that ignoring it we keep searching for a Rousseau, an Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Montesquieu, generals like Washington, Cromwell and De Gaulle, Marx and Mao... Are we lost? Never. This is the best thing that could be happening to us. No matter how much the suffering, no matter how great the decay, this is the only way we will learn. And only when we learn will we break our chains of mental slavery. So even if this new dispensation seems to be self-destructing faster than expected, it is imperative that we help it to survive for a full five-year term. No dissolution of parliament please, no army intervention, even if America says so. __
