Basharat Shameem
It was in 1947 itself that Faiz Ahmad Faiz sensitized us about the coming dystopia that Pakistan was to be in the future with his famous poem “Ye daagh daaghujala, ye shabgazeedaseher/ Wointezaarthajiska ye woseher tau nahi…” The poem is a passionate lament and forebodes a dark, dystopian system rather than a utopia because of the foundation of the country was accompanied by the great communal holocaust of 1947 as a result of the flawed two nation theory. Interestingly, this poem was first recited in public by Faiz in Srinagar during one of his visits to the city. Then, Habib Jalib wrote further about this darkness which had come true within the first two decades of the foundation of the country in much of his poetry. For instance, in his famous 1971 poem Jalib writes about this gloom and the failed dream: “Aye Chand yahan naniklakar/Baynaam se sapnedekhakar…”
Now seventy-seven years down the line, Pakistan seems to have lived upto the dystopian and grim vision that the poetry of these two great Urdu poets encapsulated. Every day and every absurdity happening in Pakistan is a stark reminder to all of us that it has been a failed nation on all counts, no matter what was envisioned about it by its feudal Muslim elite founders (Ashrafs) and western imperialists in 1947. Political scientist, Robert D. Kaplan, in his 1994 book, The Coming Anarchy, had identified a number of factors that contribute to a country’s failure, including constant political instability, lack of democracy, acute poverty, high corruption, ethnic conflict, and other kinds of degradation. Pakistan continues to fail on all these fronts that Kaplan mentions and in fact, on many more fronts.
Pakistan is a country whose people are living under the constant subjugation by the combined triad of Military, Mullah and Feudal Junta, of course, all in the name of Islam. All the three Juntas work to perpetuate their (dominant) class hegemony over the exploited and repressed people there. They do this by all means whether through conducting farcical elections or sometimes through direct martial law, and indeed also through stoking up religious radicalism and terrorism inside or outside their territory as a distraction and camouflage to cover up their repression.
Pakistan is a country which is beset with the most rigid form of inequality and feudalism even in this modern age. In the rural areas of Punjab, Sindh, KPK, and Baluchistan where Jagirdari and Wadero (feudal) system is still prevalent, ancient age type slavery is rife. Pakistan is essentially ruled by an exploitative nexus of feudal-military clergy while grand narrative of religion is used to polish it.Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani Ambassador to the US and a prominent author writes: “About 95 percent of Pakistanis were born after partition, but the Pakistani education system reinforces a national narrative that airbrushes a lot of history out and photoshops a lot of non-history into people’s minds. So Pakistan generally has a national discourse that has not always been completely open. Pakistani nationalism has been built around two ideas: antipathy to India, and Islam as a political slogan.So those two mixed together do confuse the people. Don’t forget that half of Pakistanis are illiterate and that 42 percent of school-age children don’t go to the school of any sort. Also,there are very well-organized Islamic political parties that use violence to make sure that facts and history are not openly discussed and debated.”Numerous scholarly studies have further corroborated this.
Pakistan was created in the name of Islam but it broke down into two parts within 24 years. This was because of the Punjabi and Urdu-speaking establishment’s brutal political, cultural, and economic oppression of Bengalis.Within Pakistan, no dissent is tolerated. Journalists and intellectuals are frequently targeted and forced into migration or submission. In recent times, intellectuals and journalists who have dared to critique were brutally murdered or subjected to enforced disappearance by the military and its notorious intelligence agency, ISI. Balochs, Sindhis, Mohajirs, and Pashtuns from time to time have resisted against the Punjabi domination. We have witnessed movements like Independent Baluchistan, SindhuDesh, Jinnah Pur, and Pakhtunistan. But these movements have been brutally repressed. Shias, Ahmadiyas, Hazaras, and Gilgitis also suffer from repression of all kinds.Pakistan’s existence is fractured. Through the decades, Pakistan has assiduously suppressed various ethnic struggles. To achieve this, the Pakistani establishment has a deliberate policy of encouraging extremism and fundamentalism to dilute the struggles for justice. There is no unifying factor in Pakistan except the promotion of religious extremism and fundamentalism.But this comes at a cost of ultimate self-destruction as these groups ultimately acquire much power and ideology. However, the Pakistani establishment continues to use them against its neighbouring countries and we have indeed borne the brunt of it in the last three decades.
The corrupt generals operate and run the country like a Mafia. It resembles a horribleoligarchy and complete dystopia. Pakistan is controlled and dictated by the Punjab -dominated military establishment. Any politician who doesn’t toe the line is shunted out in due course of time. The real power centre in Pakistan is not Islamabad, but the Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Pakistani military also has acquired immense wealth, land, and corporate ownerships at the cost of poor Pakistani people. The military establishment manufactures constant delusions and untruths to keeps the gullible Pakistani masses in ignorance. The oligarchs stash wealth abroad especially in the western countries while running the country on toxic narratives of religious extremism and radicalism. They do this while Pakistan continues to be dependent on aid packages from US, Gulf Countries and now China with its political, economy and social fabrics are in complete mess.But now gradually, the reality is dawning upon many young people in Pakistan. They have started to question the powerful oligarchs of Rawalpindi. Many of them are now leaving the country as they see no future in it. According to a report compiled by the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, nearly a million people, mostly young,have left Pakistan in the last two years alone.
This excerpt from British-Pakistani author Tariq Ali’s novel Night of the Golden Butterfly perfectly sums up the macabre and dystopian conditions prevailing in Pakistan: “I spoke of the country where I could not live, where people were spewed out and forced to seek refuge abroad, where human dignity had become wreckage. [A dissenting person’s ] life was a living-death example of a human being putrefying in the filth that was our Fatherland…Its rulers [especially Generals] Scum of the earth. Blind, uncaring monsters. Fatherland needs a tsunami to drown them and their ill-gotten gains…Fatherland was now on intensive chemotherapy [on which] all sorts of new drugs are being used, but they might end up producing new cancers. It was the inner circle of Hell.”
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