Recall the Gojra killings of Christians and arson of their households! Did it result in anything that could stop the Lahore massacre? Instead, the government of Punjab appointed Ahmad Raza Tahir as the Lahore Capital City Police Officer whereas a Lahore High Court judge, Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman, after conducting judicial inquiry into the incident of Gojra, had recommended strict action against him as at the time he was the Regional Police Officer Faisalabad and failed to control the riots there. It was only due to the Court’s direct intervention that his appointment was made an issue of, however his appointment was not cancelled by the government, but the Court itself. Why the Court did not initiate the contempt of court proceedings against the persons responsible of appointing such as an officer is anybody’s guess!
By Dr. Khalil Ahmad
Every time a massacre of human beings, like the one of May 28 which witnessed the killing of more than 80 innocent Ahmadi citizens in Lahore, occurs in Pakistan, the need for going back to the basics is highlighted ever than before. In this short piece just one of the basics, demands of the statecraft will be focused on. Also, inclusion of fundamental rights as the basis of the modern constitutions will be referred to.
History, especially of the sub-continent, shows that in order to ensure peaceful co-existence among the people professing various or sometimes conflicting beliefs, rules must rule beliefs. The practice of the theocratic states proves the same point: if they were primarily persecutory, they fell short of peace and stability, as a result the ruling elite lost its hold and interests, and with time that state withered away; and if they were basically tolerant to other beliefs, they not only made certain rules but made them rule that theocratic state also. A local case of comparison is between Akbar and Aurang Zeb’s periods. The British, they stand apart in that. That suggests that beliefs and statecraft lie on quite opposite poles. When beliefs rule rules, they play havoc; when rules rule beliefs, they bring harmony and peace.
Whenever propagators of beliefs happened to be with state power in their hands, they had to make a choice between primacy of their beliefs and the demands of statecraft. Indeed, the choice was not like that of black or white, there were many grey areas in between. But, of course, beliefs were never put on top of everything. Tolerance and its concomitant norms got encoded – that demonstrates beliefs cannot rule human beings, rules can as in the shape of statecraft.
Both modern political theory and modern statecraft in the same tradition overrode pure as well as mixed theocracies when they improved upon them by admitting certain fundamental individual rights of the people as granted and inalienable. These fundamental individual rights were declared as the core values in the modern constitutions. In this regard, the Pakistani constitution of 1973 is no different.
Thus, the right to profess any beliefs is a fundamental individual right which state cannot curtail, suspend, or abolish, let alone other elements to enjoy such a privilege. Rather, state, as in Pakistan too, is responsible of protecting persons and their places of worship, and cannot discriminate on the basis of their beliefs. That’s what the political theory has achieved and no doubt many a society also. That’s part of the statecraft today.
How Pakistan fares in that? That seems an absurd question given what happened in Garhi Shahu and Model Town, where two larger Ahmadia places of worship in Lahore were attacked in the most organized manner. Actually what took place in 1953 in Punjab was re-enacted at a smaller scale. But the difference is substantial: in 1953 anti-Ahmadia riots took place almost in whole of the Punjab, this time their two larger places of worship were targeted; in 1953 somehow government was willing and ready to quell the riots and protect Ahmadi citizens, this time it was not, rather blames are a plenty that the Punjab government seems to have soft corner for the killers, the so-called Punjabi Taliban.
In addition, this time the situation is very much complex. As it is, the killers are organized, trained, and resourceful, and well-connected. And as it is, they had been enjoying government or government agencies’ support. Is it still so or not is not clear, since never ever in recent years this was denied by the concerned quarters. Though, government and the army are waging a war against such organizations, but at least in Punjab one can discern some such persons and organizations still enjoy or seem to enjoy support of government and its various agencies. When law does not play its due role in their cases, we the citizens are justified in doubting the intentions of the government and its agencies!
Let’s once again focus on the issue of statecraft. From the very beginning Pakistan was failed in this regard as the theocratic elements tried to rule the Pakistani citizens through their own beliefs. It was one of the major factors that hindered and delayed the preparation of a consensus constitution. Only after the separation of its Eastern Wing into Bangladesh, when in the wake of weaker military and theocratic elements on their backfoot, that in the remaining Pakistan somewhat secular and less theocratic political parties were able to reach an agreement to promulgate a constitution which ensured fundamental rights to the citizens of Pakistan including the right to religious freedom (Articles 20 to 22).
Unfortunately, this did not last longer to bear fruit. The affair of military and theocratic elements concluded in the worst martial law Pakistan ever bore the brunt of, and a theocratic-military dictatorship was installed, and annihilated whatever semblance of religious/sectarian harmony and peace Pakistan had. The period of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) is the greatest failure of statecraft in Pakistan. The beliefs were put at the helm of the state affairs. The citizens were re-labeled on the basis of their beliefs. Not only that, they were put under scrutiny by a specific brand, which in fact ruled them. That nurtured conflict and clash among entirely different believers as well as in the same set of believers.
This utter failure of statecraft was not just an abrupt development. The subsequent rule of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Peoples Party, still known as a secular Party, had already abandoned much ground to the theocratic elements to take hold of. It was under his rule that Ahmadis were declared a minority, and it was under Zia-ul-Haq that their official persecution was enacted, though all the minorities living in Pakistan have always been the target of social persecution.
Thus, in Pakistan it is not just the failure of the statecraft. Throughout the sixty years, the Pakistani state has been acting as a persecutory state, an accomplice of the theocratic elements. Both politics and statecraft have been using religious and sectarian entities to further their interests, and vice verse. In the present perspective, such a state must be dubbed as a criminal state. Leave aside all that the state functionaries and/or political ruling elite are uttering after the Lahore massacre, there will be no lesson learned, no culprits and accomplices apprehended, tried, and punished. Nor there will be any true investigation, nor overhauling of the whole system of agencies and policing, nor any effective controlling of persons and organizations pouring out hate sermons daily all over the country.
Recall the Gojra killings of Christians and arson of their households! Did it result in anything that could stop the Lahore massacre? Instead, the government of Punjab appointed Ahmad Raza Tahir as the Lahore Capital City Police Officer whereas a Lahore High Court judge, Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman, after conducting judicial inquiry into the incident of Gojra, had recommended strict action against him as at the time he was the Regional Police Officer Faisalabad and failed to control the riots there. It was only due to the Court’s direct intervention that his appointment was made an issue of, however his appointment was not cancelled by the government, but the Court itself. Why the Court did not initiate the contempt of court proceedings against the persons responsible of appointing such as an officer is anybody’s guess!
As to the fundamental rights, including the religious freedom, it is just like a daylight robbery that these fundamental rights exist in the constitution but the people of Pakistan have been deprived of these by the elite classes of Pakistan and their mafia minions. These rights have nothing to do with the ordinary citizens’ lives. The politics of the elite classes and their theocratic, rather criminal, statecraft has created, nourished, and unleashed mafia groups with this or that denomination, both at smaller and larger scales, which rule the ordinary lot of people, persecute them, and send them to hell or heaven.
Under the circumstances, how to be optimistic – if not like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, and thinking such a massacre will not be repeated against this or that sect or minority. What is predictable is that like so many others, the Lahore massacre will be gone with the wind. The ruling elite and the elite classes will be doing fine as usual, their illegitimate kids will be roaming the land of the pure as usual, politics and statecraft will flourish as usual, and such massacres will be occurring as usual: because our ruling elite cannot make rules rule beliefs, the least of what statecraft demands!
The writer is founder/head of the Alternate Solutions Institute.