Askari Raza Malik
HAZRAT Ali (RA) said, “The richest per
son is he who has knowledge and wisdom,
and the poorest is the ignorant who does not even know that people laugh at him”. Knowledge and wisdom are two different things. A knowledgeable person is not necessarily also wise. Wisdom is a blessing of God. It is a reward for God consciousness or Taqwa as known to the Muslims who care to know. Wisdom enables people to differentiate between myth and reality, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, selfishness and sacrifice, integrity and corruption, just and unjust and rights and limitations.
Wisdom creates good sense and sense of proportion in the wise. Above all it makes one conscious of human limitations and one’s role in making of destiny vis a vis Divine power, justice and intervention. The wise knows that the matter is indestructible and what goes around comes around. Two categories of people in Pakistan are adept at turning all the logic on its head; the Mullahs and the politicians, especially those who came after Ayub. One of the knowledgeable politicians while censuring the government in strongest possible words demanded, ‘A stress free political system’. That is innocence personified. That is asking for paradise on earth. Life is a stressful business. The government is incapable of removing his stresses. He perhaps meant NAB free political environment. He must know that peace comes with sacrifice, not loot. It results from self-denial, not self-worship. It is essential to kill the ego before wishing for a stress free life.
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is a blessing in disguise. With NAB the Divine accountability might be delayed. When it comes from above, there is nowhere to run. It has happened before. Our recent history should serve as an eye opener. Some political families have become history. Where are Bhutto’s real heirs? Bilawal is a pseudo Bhutto. Fatima is a genuine Bhutto though she remains rather recluse. Bilawal is in vain trying to cash on Bhutto’s legacy. They have lost sons, suffered humiliation and ignominy on various accounts, earned ugly reputation and contacted untimely ailments, but their conscience is in deep slumber and they do not learn their lessons. One more political stalwart asserts that if anything happened to his leader, Imran Khan would be held responsible. Did IK tell him to commit theft that he is famous for? Remember, what goes around, comes around. It is time to wakeup to the ground realities. Look the way the wind is blowing. The atmosphere is charged with the word accountability. If NAB fails to nab the culprits, Divine accountability would ensue. Who knows it might have already commenced. Who can tell the abrupt sinking count of platelets, the ever-rising sugar level, galloping BP, the angina and even the stone in the kidney and hernia are not the harbinger of the ominous.
Then there are royalists more loyal than the king. They turn and twist the logic to defend their respective godfathers and cannot wait to shift the blame elsewhere, be it the government, NAB, the courts or the military. They insult the common man’s intelligence and his ability to tell simple right from wrong. In this they also commit a sin against God. He says, ‘And do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know (it)’, 2:42. And, ‘We know what they conceal and what they declare’. (36:76) Her own party man, President Laghari had sacked BB’s government for corruption. The President was convinced that she was patronizing her notorious husband. In addition, he should have asked for investigation and taken her to court. Ghulam Ishaq should have done the same with Nawaz Sharif when he sacked him for corruption. And when it came to Musharraf, he in his impetuosity forgot that Nawaz Sharif was also guilty of crimes against the nation. He had sufficient grounds to indict him for corruption and get rid of him once for all. All of them had failed to nip the evil in the bud. The tumor grew into cancer and it fell to IK’s destiny to treat national political cancer also. The Maulana’s March has turned into a sit-in. Politicians, who fear NAB more than they fear God, have joined him. The Maulana is one of them. He is not far back in the queue. The mullahs-cum-politicians are a deadly combination. They have unlimited ability to turn wisdom into folly and folly into wisdom and get away with murder. Still it looks as if all their usual mantra failed to bear fruit.
A wee bit too early in the day the Maulana had started seeing red. He thought 1977 was in the offing. The others also know that anarchy is the only hope to save them from the onslaught of accountability. Yet they are not prepared to stick their necks out all the way. It is doubtful if the Maulana would dare it alone. But if he indeed unleashed his goons to “arrest the PM as he claims” the government is not unlikely to act purposefully to quell the rebellion. All the undemocratic tactics and practices that Pakistan has so painfully endured in the past must be finished for good. The salvation of this government, nay, that of Pakistan is at stake. DG ISPR’s statement was excellently timed. The Maulana was obviously jolted. This time his boasts were aptly answered. He has limited options now. His dream of creating large scale law and order situation all over the country will result in dilution of his limited resources and degradation in detail. His agitation has won him a universal exposure in Indian media and pleased the Afghan Taliban whose banners he has shamelessly displayed. If that were his aim, he had achieved it. In that case Indian resources have been well spent. Beyond that the Maulana would turn out to be a big looser.
— The writer, a retired Maj Gen, is a Rawalpindi-based freelance columnist and author of book, “Pakistan in search of a Mesiah.
