The Taliban mindset
Dr Khalil Ahmad
In order to secure constitutional protection for Muslims, the Muslim
League argued in separatist language on the basis of a different
religious identity. However, as the Congress would not budge on the
issue, the Muslim League went ahead with its demand for Pakistan. Thus,
the constitutional issue was merged into a religious issue.
Naturally when Pakistan came into being, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah found himself facing a dilemma: the Muslim League had been using
the rhetoric of separate religious identity and now he wanted to make
the new homeland a religiously neutral state as is evident from his
speech of August 11, 1947. That it could not happen, and the controversy
lives to this day, proves that. Also, that a constitution could not be
framed until 1973, or while a few were framed and enforced, whatever
their merit was, they could not survive, is sufficient to demonstrate
the point: transforming the constitutional issue (especially the right
to religious freedom) into a religious one proved disastrous for the new
homeland. That it provided various elites, including military and
religious, with an excuse to exploit the absence of a constitution to
their benefit is undeniable, and it was they who tried their best to
ensure that no constitution should prevail in Pakistan. The fundamental
rights of the citizens, which found a mention as far back as in 1928 in
the Nehru Report, remained a chimera in Pakistan until the lawyers’
movement brought them to the streets in 2007. Socialism, populism,
religion, ‘enlightened moderation,’ and a mixture of parasitism and
welfarism completely eclipsed the issue of fundamental rights. All the
politics through the last six decades can be summarized thus: from the
very beginning, a constitutional issue, i.e. the issue of fundamental
rights of individual citizens, was confused with the issue of state’s
control of individual citizens’ lives, i.e. the State’s right to
determine what is best for its citizens including their religion.
Principally, the only point of a constitution is its ability to protect
life and property and fundamental rights of individual citizens. Also,
the State’s control of its individual citizens is a relic of the
monarchical past where instead of law, the ruler was the law, and he
acted like a father or mother taking care of his subjects. When law
rules supreme, however, it means the laws and the State give equal
protection to every citizen’s life, property and fundamental rights.
That is why all the attacks on constitutions first require the
suspension of these fundamental rights. That brings us to two beliefs:
that it is right to deprive others of their natural freedom, and that it
is not. Whether those who deprive others of their freedom also try to
control their lives or not is beside the point: what is important is
whether this deprivation is achieved by force or by (false) law. That
such rule of law, ensuring the fundamental rights of each citizen to
live his life as he wished, was missing in Pakistan, created a vacuum
which many groups and parties, religious, sectarian, ethnic and
otherwise, and conglomerations of intellectual, political, business and
military elites rushed to fill. That this vacuum was deliberately kept
intact and prolonged is obvious.
That what is happening around us in Pakistan today again proves that the
nature of the crises is constitutional. It explains the onslaught of the
Taliban as a violent resurrection of that mindset which was never
brought under the constitution nor dealt with constitutionally. The
absence of a constitution, and when we had one, its sheer violation by
all elites, intellectual, religious, political, business, and military,
strengthened that mindset. Additionally, this mindset was deliberately
strengthened by all the elites to perpetuate their rule and hegemony,
and to protect their parasitism.
It was nourished and nurtured and trained at the cost of constitutional
provisions relating especially to fundamental rights and especially
religious freedom. So, what was sowed by the intellectual, political,
religious, business, and military elites is being reaped mostly by
ordinary citizens in the form of absolute insecurity that threatens
their very existence without any reprieve in sight. This tragedy is
deeper than our imagination can fathom: the number of Hardcore Taliban
in Pakistan may well be smaller, as is repeatedly claimed these days by
the political and military elites, at hundreds or thousands who will be
wiped out in months, but who can enumerate the number of Softcore
Taliban living amongst us!
The Softcore category can be divided into active and passive. Religious
groups and parties fall into the active, while the passive are those
ordinary citizens who are unaware of their own Taliban mindset. This
passive category openly believes in depriving others of their freedom
and controlling their lives according to its own scheme of thought. That
may be why we see no mass agitation against the Taliban in spite of
their killing us indiscriminately.
To fight this war we first have to admit that we are in the midst of an
intellectual as well as a real war. The constitution of 1973 should be
the rallying point for all who do not believe in depriving others of
their freedom and who believe in the fundamental rights ensured in that
constitution. Not only will that help us fight both the Hardcore and
Softcore Taliban but it will help bring harmony, peace, stability and
happiness to Pakistanis! |
