Last week a video clip of a morning show hosted by one Maya Khan on a local TV channel began doing the rounds. The clip shows Ms. Khan with a posse of assorted thirty-something women and a cameraman raiding a famous public park of Karachi and prowling the lush vicinity looking for young unmarried couples.

The idea was to confront ‘wayward’ young women and embarrass them for ‘betraying their parents’ trust’.

The very next day another video clip showing the same Maya Khan bouncing off the walls on TV via a dance routine that can at best be explained as a hefty personification of a rhythmic earthquake, appeared.

This thus perfectly capped the volatile moral state of Pakistan’s urban bourgeoisie that, especially in the last 15 years or so, have managed to grow two heads on a single body – one spouting loud moralistic clichés while the other animatedly bopping up and down and sideways to the tune of assorted Bollywood masala numbers, as if totally oblivious about what the other head was harping about.

This also affirms the fact that contrary to popular perception, the ‘Islamization’ wave that began cutting through and across Pakistan from the 1980s onwards had little to do with the uneducated and the have-nots.

It was always and still is a phenomenon that is largely associated with the country’s urban middle and trader classes.

In the 1980s, a number of Islamist outfits had already made in-roads in the politics and sociology of Pakistan by riding on the Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation process.

But as most of them were highly militant and eventually got themselves ‘strategically’ linked with certain sections of the radicalised military institutions, it were the evangelical movements that managed to reap the most success within the country’s social and cultural milieu.

The largest of them was also the oldest. The ranks of the Tableeghi Jamat (TJ), a highly ritualistic Deobandi Islamic evangelical movement, swelled. But since the TJ was more a collection of working-class and petty-bourgeoisie cohorts and fellow travellers, newer evangelical outfits emerged with the idea of almost exclusively catering to the growing ‘born again’ trend being witnessed in the county’s middle and upper-middle classes in the 1990s.
Three of the most prominent organisations in this context were Farhat Hashmi’s Al-Huda, Zakir Naik’s ‘Islamic Research Foundation’ and Babar R. Chaudhry’s Arrahman Araheem (AA).

Farhat Hashmi

Naik, Hashmi and Chaudhry were all constructing feel-good narratives and apologias for the educated urbanites so that these urbanites could feel at home with religious ritualism, myth, attire and rhetoric while at the same time continue to enjoy the fruits of amoral modern materialism and frequent interaction with (Western and Indian) cultures that were otherwise described as being ‘anti-Islam.’

Of course, the whole question of such narratives smacking of contradiction went out the window as young middle-class Pakistanis admiringly saw pop and cricketing stars ‘rediscovering God’ with the help of the mentioned organizations – but not without the things that kept them materially satisfied (corporate contracts, modern fashion businesses, music products, etc).

Such contractions and their patrons were largely passive in orientation, but with the emergence of 24/7 electronic media in the last decade, they became more visible and evangelical and a lot more ‘popular’ – a happening that went down well with the cynical ratings-hungry TV channels.

What’s more, the trend in this respect is now no more the sole domain of the trendy ‘born-agains’.

One can even see decked-up film and TV actors and actresses, pop stars, morning show hosts and even chefs on cooking shows completely bypassing the irony and absurdity of them spouting the almost obligatory sentence or two about the need for piety and good morals in society.

Not that their respective passions and professions are immoral, but they are certainly not in step with the kind of pious spiritual alignments habitually advocated by these men and women and that too, smack-dab in the middle of topics and scenarios that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

Pussycat vigilantism: A brief history

This strange phenomenon is not just about simple hypocrisy, it is also and actually about glorifying this hypocrisy through gung-ho acts in which pussycat media vigilantes prey upon soft targets to exhibit their ‘bravery’ but squeak away if ever an opportunity arises to do the same to those who can and will bite back.

Since when have so-called ‘educated’ and affluent urbanites become moral crusaders? Is this a new phenomenon

encouraged by a ratings-hungry and vindictive private electronic media that is reflecting the contradiction-laden acts of morality being flexed by the country’s urban middle-classes; or is there more to what meets the immediate eye?
A quick research on the matter suggests that nothing of the sort was ever reported in Pakistan till about 1979. I mention this year because after going through newspapers of yore, the first reported case of moral vigilantism that I stumbled upon was mentioned in an issue of Dawn of 1980.

The report is about groups of youth carrying sticks and bricks, moving into streets of some of Karachi’s areas, randomly knocking on the doors of houses and ‘ordering’ the male occupants of the houses to come with them to the mosque to say their prayers.

According to Rauf Talib, a former chief reporter of Urdu dailies Imroz and then Aman, most of such groups became active between 1978 and 1980 after the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship decided to form ‘Salat Committees’ whose job it was to enforce compulsory prayers (in mosques) upon the men; and (during Ramazan), punish those found eating or smoking in public.

Talib said that when these committees propped up, most Pakistanis did not even know the meaning of ‘Salat’ – the Arab word for the Urdu word ‘namaz.’

Interestingly, reports about the committees simply evaporate in newspapers after 1982, but news items about how groups of moral vigilantes publically punished supposed offenders of Ramazan’s ‘decorum and spirit’ increase between 1981 and 1985.

The punishments usually included beating the offender with shoes and sticks but there were at least two reports (one in Dawn and the other in Jang) where the accused (men caught eating during Ramazan), were first beaten and then tied to lampposts, with a garland of shoes hung around their necks!

Talib suggests that the idea of forming Salat Committees by the government was soon shelved when the people of some areas where the committees were active, reacted to the constant and unwelcome knocking by strangers on the doors of their houses, ended up scuffling with the committee members.

But who were these people who ran the committees?

‘Young Jamat-i-Islami members,’ says Asghar Waris Ali, a lecturer at a local government college in Karachi. ‘It was them and some high school kids from various government schools.’

Asghar says that the organisers of the committees were usually university students belonging to religious and pro-Zia student organisations working closely with the head molvies of the areas’ mosques.

‘They were a huge failure,’ Mr. Ashgar said.

What about those who were going around punishing people caught eating or smoking during Ramazan?

‘Yes, that became common in those days as well,’ Mr. Ashgar explained. ‘I don’t know exactly who was doing that, but such behaviour was being encouraged by the government as well as by the police,’ he added.

The ‘encouragement’ that Mr. Asghar was talking about triggered two tendencies in this respect, one saw the overenthusiastic displays of moral policing by certain religiously-inclined civilians and media outlets and the other was the more cynical trend amongst many policemen who began to exploit the carelessly defined moral edicts of the Zia dictatorship to actually extort money from the public.

For example by the late 1980s groups of conservative middle-class youth calling themselves the ‘Allah Tigers’ emerged. Between 1989 and 1995, they became infamous for ‘raiding’ hotels and social clubs during New Years Eves and harassing and attacking ‘obscene women’ and ‘drunkards’ there.

Then throughout the 1980s, newspapers (especially English dailies and monthlies) are full of reports about policemen stopping couples in cars and on bikes and asking for their marriage certificates (nikanamah).

Farah Nawaz who was an active member of a women’s rights group during that period and now runs a small education-related NGO in Karachi, says that in their greed to extort money, the cops did not even spare old couples.

Farah said: ‘There was an incident at Karachi’s Sea View area in, I think 1987, where a son who was driving his old mother to her sister’s place in a rickety car. He was stopped by two cops and asked to first explain his relationship with his mother and then prove that she was his mother and not a prostitute! He got enraged and began beating up the cops who could not retaliate because a mob had gathered. So they ran away.’

Until about the late 1980s and early 1990s, the growing cases of moral policing and harassment largely involved conservative urban men coming from lower-middleclass backgrounds (the petty-bourgeoisie) or among the youth from nouveau-riche families who’d gotten rich during the Zia regime.

I returned to Rauf Talib to ask him when did these tendencies of moral policing by certain sections of the society and the police become entangled with the ways of the media?

He said that during the Zia regime the private media (mainly newspapers and magazines) did not play any major role to encourage or advocate his politics of morality.

He explained: ‘I think only Jasarat (Urdu daily sympathetic to the Jamat-i-Islami) paid any heed to highlighting the supposed areas of immorality in society,  but all the major Urdu and English papers and magazines actually spend more effort in castigating the actions of those who were harassing people in the name of faith.’

‘But, he continued, ‘it was very tough for a lot us who were journalists in those days to criticise the regime. It was a time when journalists and students were being flogged, whereas known drug barons were being patronised by the regime and young men were openly harassing defenseless men and women in the name of safeguarding Islamic morals.’

Most journalists that I talked to pointed at the famous/infamous Urdu magazineTakbeer as the media organ that ‘pioneered’ the idea of turning civilian moral vigilantism into a successful media ploy.

Though a right-wing political magazine, Takbeer also became famous for publishing social ‘exposés’ in which it printed photographs and reports of men and women drinking alcohol and dancing, and couples caught dating in certain public places such as parks, cinemas and restaurants.

When Takbeer became a hit with readers, many other Urdu dailies and magazines began forming their own moral raid brigades.

 

These different people on most occasions have simply refused to come under the all-encompassing umbrella of ideological unity the country’s establishment, its religious allies and the urban bourgeoisie have been shoving down our throats for the last six decades.

But no doubt there is also polarisation of a more genuine kind in society. On occasions it’s been like a black comedy that can generate sheer bafflement. Every Friday at my office during the second half of the morning session, I notice guys who regularly go for prayers at the mosque break up into little groups. One day I decided to figure out why that happens, or why they are all not going to the same mosque.

It is easy for me to understand that the Shia among them would visit the Shia mosques, but one Friday I was rather amused when I overheard a group of Sunni guys discussing why they would not go to a particular (Sunni) mosque because the mullah’s sermons there offended them. It turned out that the lads were Deobandi Sunnis, who, due to lack of time, had had to visit a nearby mosque whose mullah belonged to another Sunni sub-sect, the Barelvis, who are the majority Sunnis in Pakistan. So the discussion was to locate a Deobandi mosque nearest to the office.

A senior colleague who’d seen me talking to these guys, approached me in the evening, smiling: “Did you see how they were whining?”

I smiled back, “I’m not very good at understanding these things.”

He shook his head and then said something that took me by surprise. He said, “I was the one who introduced them to the mosque they are now whining about. Do you know in their hearts they now believe I am a heretic.”

This senior colleague is a very religious man, with a beard and all, so his claim did baffle me but not for long. I soon realised what he was suggesting: He belonged to the Barelvi sect. It was a strange experience because on so many occasions I’ve seen him agreeing with his Deobandi counterparts on so many issues, especially on things like the Blasphemy Law, the need to enforce the Shariah, etc. But here they were, refusing to go to one another’s preferred mosques.

This actually shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where the state has for long been active in defining what or who a ‘Muslim’ is, and that too in a society brimming with various sects and sub-sects. This has left the sects judging one another, sometimes overtly and sometimes discreetly.

The state did not learn anything from the findings of the famous Justice Munir Report in which — after the 1954 anti-Ahmadi riots, instigated by the Jamat-i-Islami and Nizam-i-Islami Party — Justice Munir noted that according to his interviews with a number of ulema on the matter, he found that no two ulema agreed on a uniformed definition of a good Muslim.

Later on history recorded another rather amusing episode. During the movement against the Z A Bhutto government in 1977, led by an alliance of various religious parties (the PNA), the alliance leaders met at the Karachi Press Club to brief the press about their plan of action. Demanding the imposition of Shariah laws and the ouster of the ‘secular, socialist’ Bhutto regime, the alliance’s top three parties were representing the country’s main Sunni sub-sects.

The Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) followed the Deobandi school, whereas the Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) the Barelvi. PNA’s third main party, Jamat-i-Islami, had a following among middle-class urban Sunni conservatives and pro-Saudi elements.

PNA leaders talk to press at Karachi Press Club (1977)

Newspapers reported that after outlining their plan of action and professing their unity of purpose (the downfall of Bhutto and the imposition of Shariah), the PNA leaders broke for the evening prayers.

In those days there were no prayer rooms or mosques in places of work, and certainly none at the Karachi Press Club (though there is one now). So some journalists cleared a room for the PNA leaders to say their prayers in. Urdu dailies, Imroze, Jang and Musawat, then went on to report how a restrained but firm commotion broke out amongst the leaders when they couldn’t agree on who would lead the prayers as all three followed their own respective schools of thought.

The issue was not political but sectarian. Some newspapers reported that JUI’s Maulana Mufti Mehmood refused to offer prayers behind JUP ‘s Shah Ahmed Noorani. Syed A. Peerzada in his book Politics of JUI quotes a JUI leader who alleged that the reporting of this discord was the doing of the PPP’s Kausar Niazi whose job it was to exploit the sectarian differences between the PNA’s religious parties.

This might be true, but then this was perhaps the easiest thing to do, i.e. disturb the make-up of what Bhutto might have (correctly) thought was, at best, a cosmetic face of unity among the political-religious figures of Pakistan. The fact still holds true, and like it or not, perhaps, it always will.

Many years ago, when Swat was still green and free from bushy warlords, I knew a middle-aged man there who was also a tracking guide.

His name was Atique Ali Khan and I remember every time I used to ask him about how his two children were doing at school, he had this habit of constantly quoting a well-known hadidh. “Allah be praised,” he used to say. “They are doing well at school. As the Prophet used to say, go as far as China for knowledge.”

Well, I haven’t been to Swat in a long time and I have no idea what became of Atique, but thanks to the rude mushrooming of the rowdy keepers of faith in that part of Pakistan that took place in that area some two to three years ago, I’m sure his children weren’t even able to walk a kilometer for knowledge, let alone ever visiting China.

These Islamist Rambos were an angry lot. Once upon a time, it is said, they used to let off steam by chopping down trees. That was bad enough, but I guess ever since trees have become somewhat scarce in Swat, the level of their delusions about faith and religious laws suddenly doubled, rather quadrupled.

As a consequence they began ranting incoherent loud nothings on clandestine FM radio stations about how extremely angry they were about all the obscenity and injustice in the world and about matters related to the education of little girls.  Indeed, a grave danger to Islam these young ones certainly are.

Well, the loud FM stations too didn’t seem to satisfy their monstrous appetites for divinely-inspired action, so off they went blowing up CD shops and girls’ schools.

Blow ‘em all, became their heartfelt mantra, as they became angrier, louder and a lot bushier.

Unfortunately, since supposedly their faith was a lot deeper than that of us ‘bad Muslims’, it required more from them. So these angry men started blowing themselves up!

What’s more, for an impressive display and effect, they did this in wide open public places. Off they went with a bang, taking along with them mutilated and severed bodies, dozens of men, women and children. And up they all went to good ol’ paradise, or so they say, and so they believed.

But what about you and I? The bad Muslims. We, who are ready to shout down the US for its drone attacks, and the Zionists for their barbarity against the Palestinians?

What do we have to say about the blowing up of girls’ schools, CD and barber shops in our own backyard? Happenings that are still a reality in various towns, enclaves and cities of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and South Punjab?

What do we have to say about men of faith in our very own country who actually believe that suicide and multiple murders in the name of God will land them a cozy little corner in paradise?

The ideological and material clash of two extremes – Bush’s clean-shaven neo-cons and the bushy Islamist terrorists – have left most ‘moderate’ Muslim populations in a scared and awkward state of myopia.

This disposition has helped serve the purpose of the Islamists. Because sadly, most ‘moderate Muslims’, instead of forming a third opinion through some sort of a rational consensus, have decided to take sides between the two extremes.

For example, most Pakistanis naturally took an opposing view of Bush’s ‘War on Terror’. Fair enough. But since much of this was done without a clear third view, commentaries and opinions against matters like drone attacks, suicide bombings and ‘war on terror’ have regrettably sounded more and more like jerky, jingoistic, reactionary spiels.

Unfortunately, these excitable tirades helped fatten the delusional and self-righteous complexes of the Islamists.

The third view – that is directly linked to the democratic political parties and the self-interest of the military, government and society of Pakistan – was ultimately sacrificed at the alter of hyperbolic political clichés and rants, making the country to continue suffering from a scenario in which we went on bad mouthing one extreme (neo-cons) while uncannily allowing the other extreme to get fatter, bolder and wilder.

As for Atique Ali Khan, I wonder if he’s still alive, or for that matter, if his children are still alive. One thing’s for sure, though. They won’t be having many schools left to go to. But what’s a school compared to a place in Paradise, aye?

The Pakistan army as an institution is a curious creature. A self-absorbed  bulky white elephant, it can suddenly transform into becoming a raging bull in a china shop every time it feels the vast political and economic space it needs to move around in is being shrunken with the help of fences and boundary walls.

Though it has lost almost all of the wars that it has fought against archenemy India, it has done well against in this respect against the people of the country it it claims to defend.

It has constantly waged brutal battles against Baloch nationalists  (1960-62; 1973-77; 2003-); mercilessly wiped out whole villages with the help of tanks in the interior of Sindh (1983 MRD Movement); ran circles around MQM activists in Karachi (1992), and, of course, has been accused of engineering a genocide of Bengalis in the former East Pakistan in 1971.

More than being a dependable and effective fighting machine, the Pakistan army has risen to become a monolithic corporate and political empire that has increasingly safeguarded its vast economic interests and social perks under the cover of being the guardians of that vague abstraction called the ‘Pakistan ideology’, and by constantly meddling in civilian political affairs.

In spite of all this and especially due to the fact that Pakistan’s civilian set-ups have always seemed to be look utterly chaotic and ragged compared to the shining, monolithic and high sounding cohesiveness of the army, most Pakistanis have been known to actually applaud military intervention in civilian affairs.

Though the above is true, many analysts and politicos who use this argument to endorse military intervention fail to mention the fact that honeymoon periods of military regimes in Pakistan have been rather short-lived.

All military dictators have had to eventually face not only armed insurgencies but also large scale democratic movements. The reason behind this has little to do with Pakistanis being great admirers of democracy, because constant military interventions thwarting the evolution of the democratic process has not exactly produced a democratic polity.

The main reason why military regimes have had to face intense political opposition in a not-very-democratic Pakistan is that Pakistan (unlike its monolithic military) is an extremely diverse entity with numerous ethnicities, muslim sects and religions.

Theoretically such a diversity is best served by an uninterrupted and evolving democratic system that produces its own filtering system, checks and balances, and helps most elements of an animated diversity become part of the country’s political, economic and cultural processes.

However, the Pakistan armed forces’ views in this regard have usually been rather myopic and with which it has constantly tried to enforce its monolithic and narrow understanding of nationalism and faith over a diverse polity of ethnicities, Muslim sects and religions present in Pakistan.

In its pursuit to do so – ever since Ayub Khan’s military regime – the military has bagged the help of various other forces of myopia and supporters of monolithic ideological constructs, such as politico-religious parties, right-wing sections of the media, conservative politicians, and many technocrats, industrialists and bureaucrats, all of whose own political and economic interests now seem to be attached to those of the military’s.

That’s why in the last few decades, especially ever since the mid and late 1970s, apart from, the military and its civilian mouthpieces have been so enthusiastic about safeguarding ‘Pakistan ideology’ and its Iqbal-meets-Maududi ‘Islamic’ raison d’être.

Of course, the safeguarding of the so-called Pakistan ideology (largely constructed in the 1970s after the 1971 debacle in former East Pakistan), may mostly mean the safeguarding of the military’s, the religious parties’ and their capitalist and bourgeois supporters’ political and economic interests from the perceived ‘chaos’ of a democratic system that, they fear and warn,  might strengthen the political and economic aspects of Pakistan’s diverse polity and that this can lead to the Balkanization of the country.

That’s why the military and its economic and political allies have continued to harp loudly about the ‘threats’ that Pakistan faces from forces that want to divide the country on ethnic and sectarian basis, and it seems one of these threats include democracy.

Over and over again whenever a democratic (rather, an anti-dictatorship) movement or even the country’s largely immature and pot-holed democratic system has shown hints of liberating large sections of the population from the shackles of the vagueness and myopia we call the Pakistan ideology and hurl the people towards a more pluralistic, autonomous and progressive set of economics, politics and culture, the military has gotten nervous – as if it was about to loose a conquered people.

This is the time when it intervenes. The above process is vehemently denounced as being chaotic and a threat that may break Pakistan. And of course, never mind the fact that things like economic corruption were largely institutionalised during the Ayub and Ziaul Haq dictatorships and the fact that the military has come under increasing criticism of being one of the most shady institutions when it comes to generating and accumulating wealth, it’s allies are quick to denounce democratic set-ups as being inherently corrupt and a danger to the country’s security apparatus.

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Let’s now briefly go through the political and ideological credentials of the four military regimes that Pakistan has suffered from to determine why after more than thirty years of military rule (out of Pakistan’s sixty-four years of existence), the country is still struggling to make up its mind about whether it wants an uninterrupted flow of democracy or a system that is constantly punctuated (and thus retarded) by military takeovers and indirect  military interference through hostile pro-establishment politicians, right-wing media, religious parties and desperate political opportunists.

Field Martial Ayub Khan dictatorship

Ayub Khan – File Photo

Ruling period: 1958-1969

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; corruption; threat to the unity of the federation (mainly from Sindhi, Baloch, Pushtun and Bengali nationalists, and from communism).

Promises made: To eradicate corruption; to wipe out politics of ethnicity; to unite the federation; to bring about ‘real democracy’ and/or a democratic system more suited to a third world country like Pakistan; to remain being part of Western alliances (led by United States) to protect Pakistan from Soviet-backed communist infiltration and take-over.

Achievements: A robust, state-funded capitalist economy and economic growth; secularization of the constitution and passing of liberal social and economic laws and policies; opening up Pakistan to economic and cultural aspects of western modernism and to the western cultures and markets.

Disasters:  Brutal crushing of Baloch nationalist movement (1961); witch hunts against leftists ( and thus suspected ‘Soviet agents’); farcical electoral system (called ‘Basic Democracy’) that encouraged cynical and amoral politicking; widespread corruption emerging from the state’s nepotism; handing out lucrative deals to favourite businessmen and politicians and to relatives; failure of regime to make economic growth reach beyond the clutches of the preferred business, feudal and political elites; concentration of wealth among the chosen few; going in an ill-advised war with India and then backing out after claiming the army was winning the war; handing over power to another General after being bogged down by a popular democratic movement.

Ideological orientation: Secular and pro-west but highly authoritarian and anti-pluralistic.

King’s party: Pakistan Muslim League (Convention) formed in 1962 to give Ayub the platform to draft a constitution and become President.

General Yahya Khan dictatorship

Yahya Khan – File Photo

Ruling period: 1969-71

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; threat to the unity of federation; spread of corruption and anti-Pakistan movements.

Promises made: Will end political chaos; hold free and fair elections; safeguard Pakistan’s borders.

Achievements: Holding of Pakistan’s first elections based on adult franchise (1970).

Disasters:  Refusal to hand over power to majority party (the Bengali nationalist, Awami League); engineering a genocidal purge of Bengali nationalists, killing thousands of men, women and children in the process, accusing them of treachery; radicalizing religious youth ( especially from Jamat Islami) to help the military to eradicate Bengali ‘traitors’; incompetent administration and utter failure to eradicate corruption rampant among business elite, the military and the bureaucracy; whipping up anti-India emotions, then going in an ill-planned war with India, only to surrender meekly after claiming Pakistan forces were winning the war.

Ideological orientation: Largely secular and pro-West, but began to incorporate Islamic rhetoric during the purge in former East Pakistan (denouncing Bengali nationalists as being funded by Bengali Hindus), and then during the war against India that was explained as a fight between Islam and Hinduism.

King’s party: None, but gave patronage to factions of pro-military Muslim League and the Jamat Islami during 1970 elections. Both parties were routed by Awami League and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

General Ziaul Haq dictatorship

Ziaul Haq – File Photo

Ruling period: 1977-88

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; threat to unity of the federation; fears of civil war; threat to Pakistan ideology and to the Islamic credentials of this ideology; unchecked ‘immoral’ liberalism in society; threat from pro-India and pro-Soviet forces.

Promises made: To bring Pakistan back on track by enforcing ‘Islamic’ economic, political and justice system (Nizam-e-Mustapha, Islami Nizam); to turn Pakistan into an ‘Islamic welfare sate’; to cleanse society and politics by  eradicating western and leftist influences; to hold elections in 90 days and make sure only ‘good Muslims’ are elected.

Achievements: Successfully ending the military operation in Balochistan; pulling back recession and economic uncertainty and halting the rot that had set in various institutions due to the Z A. Bhutto regime’s carelessly implemented nationalization policies; engineering the emergence of an economically vibrant urban middle-class, especially in the Punjab.

Disasters:  Retarding the constitution with highly vague and unfathomable moral clauses that have not only caused and even justified intolerant acts of violence but have also been tough to rectify by the democratic governments that followed; plunging into the Afghan Civil War on the side of the US and Saudi backed Islamist forces; failing to check the flow of heroin and guns in society pouring in from the anarchic Afghan-Pakistan border; funding the emergence of radical/ puritanical Wahabi and Deobandi madressas and indoctrination centres to whip up enthusiasm among young Pakistanis for the ‘Afghan jihad’; giving a free hand to anti-Shia and anti-Barelvi outfits that were also being patronized by Saudi Arabia; allowing the infiltration of the armed forces by fundamentalist groups and the indoctrination of junior officers and common soldiers by these groups; tactically allowing the springing up of militant Sunni sectarian organizations; encouraging the existence of a thriving ‘parallel economy’ based on gun and drug trade and involving a number of businessmen and military men; failing to curb rampant corruption; enacting reactionary cultural policies that evicted a number of talented artistes, performers, intellectuals and media personnel from TV, radio, newspapers and other cultural platforms (accusing them of being ‘anti-Islam’); conducting constant witch hunts against leftist, liberal and anti-Zia politicians, students, journalists and lawyers; introducing discriminatory  anti-women and anti-minority laws; exhibiting blatant nepotism, favoring pro-regime businessmen, traders and relatives; ignoring corruption among senior military personnel; allowing the radicalization of the ISI; patronizing Punjabi businessmen, traders, landed elite and politicians and consequently giving birth to a hatred towards Punjab in Sindh and Balochistan; hanging an elected prime minister through a controversial and one-sided trial and a largely compromised judiciary; sending thousands of opponents to jails and torture cells; leaving behind a society reeking of cynicism, moral hypocrisy, growing religious radicalization and intolerance and a twisted idea about the military being the only true guardian of Islam and ideology in Pakistan.

Ideological orientation: Islamist/conservative but pro-west.

King’s party: A revamped Pakistan Muslim League formed in 1986.

General Parvez Musharraf dictatorship

Pervez Musharraf – File Photo

Ruling period: 1999-2008

Reasons given for take-over: Political chaos; rampant corruption; sovereignty of country under threat; civilian government insulting the prestige of armed forces; dynastic politics.

Promises made: Will eradicate corruption; protect state institutions; bring ‘real democracy’; tackle extremism in society.

Achievements: Revived a spiralling economy; took action against a number of extremist and sectarian outfits; allowed the mushrooming of private TV channels and the freedom of the media; took positive and progressive cultural initiatives; gave Karachi one of it’s finest and most stable city governments as part of the dictatorship’s ‘devolution of power’ scheme.

Disasters: Was selective towards action against extremist outfits, acting against some while clandestinely harbouring others (supposedly to be used against India in Kashmir and in Afghanistan to claim Pakistan’s stake in that country); lost initial burst of popularity by retorting to the Ziast tactic of engineering a farcical referendum to become president; gathered renegade and ‘sell out’ politicians from the country’s mainstream parties to form a cosmetic political party made up entirely of ‘lotas’; triggered another Baloch insurgency by assassinating the once moderate Baloch politician, Nawab Bugti; ignored the high handedness of the ISI against the Baloch; contradicted his liberal rhetoric by showing spite against some rape victims who went public about their cases ; mishandled a troublesome Chief Justice (accidentally turning an unimpressive, conservative judge into becoming a hero); delayed taking action against extremists who’d taken over a mosque in Islamabad (Lal Masjid) – the delayed action caused great chaos and thanks to the kind of coverage it got from the hostile right- wing media, the action sprang up a number of revenge-seeking Islamist outfits that created havoc among common civilians and soldiers alike; failed to check the threat that was stalking Benazir Bhutto; engineered a bubble-like economy and illusion of prosperity that, by 2007, burst and plunged Pakistan into a grave economic crises.

Ideological orientation: Largely liberal, but at the same time authoritarian and adding a more modern twist to the usual militaristic nature and make-up of the Pakistan ideology.

King’s party: Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) formed in 2002.

It’s back. That vague, all-encompassing term, ‘Islamic Welfare State’. Imran Khan has been advocating it loudly in his recent speeches; but so have been the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and the like. During his party’s impressive rally in Karachi, Khan equated his concept of such a state with the celebrated welfare states of Scandinavian countries, albeit with a twist.

He said the state he is envisioning will be based on the dictates of collective economic well being and justice found in Islam. He said if the Scandinavians converted to Islam they’d consequentially become better Muslims than us. The question is: if one is able to achieve the task of making masses of people benefit from the many advantages of a well-oiled welfare state without involving religion, shouldn’t that be taken as an example instead of the social and theological complications that religion can throw up in this context?

Anyway, it can also be convincingly argued that the western concept of the welfare state that Khan is quoting emerged from economic manoeuvres of staunchly secular social democratic parties, and through a conscious effort by these parties to separate the church from the state. In other words, especially in Europe, the welfare state was a direct consequence of a strong secular tradition that was highly suspicious of the church (for being on the side of the aristocracy and capitalist monopolists).

The European concept of the welfare state offered itself as a middle-ground between radical Marxist anti-theism and dogmatic economic regimentation and the unchecked capitalism and aristocratic oligarchies. All the while many of these economic and political sections remained allied to the religious forces.

Organised religions have always had the tendency to side with (or be used by) those elites that attempt to halt reformist manoeuvres that may pull the people away from the orbit of religious institutions and of those economic sections that resist any kind of limits put on their profit-making. In Pakistan as well, religious institutions and parties have had a history of siding with the economic and political interests of the ‘establishment’.

This is an establishment that has tried to safeguard its interests mostly through military dictators or through a cosmetic democracy punctuated by constant interference in civilian affairs. It can do so by using religious parties which eventually end up endorsing the ways of this establishment as being something close to ‘Pakistan ideology’ and therefore, religion. Thus, the slogan of the Islamic welfare state is not exactly a culmination (as Imran suggests) of Jinnah’s original vision, but rather, it has evolved directly from the slogan of ‘Nizam-i-Mustafa’ first raised by the right-wing anti-Bhutto coalition, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), in 1977.

Interestingly, the ‘Nizam-i-Mustafa’ slogan was a reaction to Z A. Bhutto’s (and the PPP’s) slogan of ‘Masawat-i-Muhammadi’ (Islamic socialism), crafted to pad his socialist manoeuvres from the criticism he was receiving from the religious parties and the establishment. The two conveniently denounced Bhutto’s plans for economic and land reforms as being ‘non-Islamic’. It is thus not surprising that the PNA was a recipient of generous funds from traders and industrialists bitten by Bhutto’s (albeit badly managed) nationalisation.

The slogan of ‘Nizam-i-Mustafa’ was soon picked up by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship, and it was Zia who first expressed it as meaning to be the setting up of an Islamic welfare state. His model was Saudi Arabia — itself a 20th century theological dystopia with pretentions of being the Islamic Utopia initially visualised by political Islamists such as Abul Ala Maudoodi and Syed Qutb.

Religion is a moral guide. But when this guide is turned into a rigid political manifesto and used to derive social and political legislation from, it does not help one build a welfare state as such; it actually ends up strengthening the forces to which most modern economic and social reforms appear as being akin to imposition of heathen ideas. This is exactly what happened during Bhutto’s Islamic socialism and more so, during Zia’s era of Islamic state.

The Islamic welfare state that he promised only helped strengthen obscurantist sections of society, and gave birth to an enterprising but conservative bourgeoisie who are inherently opposed to the concept of the welfare state. To them such a proposition smacks of a state using their money to subsidise services to those who, to them, are not willing to work hard.

Thanks to Zia, the whole concept of Islamic welfare state is not only vague, but it has for reasons discussed come down to mean a populist promise but with an extremely elitist and at times, outright obscurantist agenda. This was also the slogan carried around by Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N in the 1990s, until one fine day he decided to get the parliament to crown him as ameerul momineen (commander of the faithful). And now here we are hearing that slogan again.

This not only proves that we have refused to learn from the economic, political and cultural debacles brought on by the state dabbling in legislation derived from what are basically moral guidelines, but also the fact that the establishment continues to use religion and political convolutions like ‘Islamic state’ as a way to safeguard its and its allies’ economic and political interests. This it does by keeping all thought of genuine economic and political reforms at bay.

“Alhamdulillah, I am a Muslim and a Pakistani.” How often does one come across statements such as this? But what does such a declaration really mean in a country where more than 95 per cent of the population is Muslim – and, of course, Pakistani?

Why do we keep hearing it over and over again? Do most Pakistanis have doubts about their religious and patriotic inclinations? Whom are they talking to?

It is Pakistanis talking to Pakistanis. So then why the constant reminders about them being Muslims and Pakistanis?
The reasons are rather simple. Our’s is a country where there is no one cohesive understanding of faith or culture.

Though there is nothing wrong in being a diverse society (in fact the diversity should be celebrated), the problem starts when the state and certain intellectual and religious circles begin to shape and enforce a single concept of “correct religion” and “true patriotism.”

When this supposedly correct version of religious belief and nationalism is given constant currency and propagation, an overriding social psyche starts to develop in which anyone criticising or even debating this version automatically becomes suspect and is likely to be accused of being “anti-Islam” and (thus)  “anti-Pakistan.”

This psyche has not only hindered the development of the culture of holding informed discourses, it has also given birth to a mind-set that explains the act of mud-slinging as “debate,” and which encourages the floating of bizarre conspiracy theories as a way to actually fatten one’s credentials as a “political analyst”, “religious scholar” and “economic expert.”

Thus, even when a view is aired, especially if it is a learned, insightful and well informed opinion, the person is subconsciously bound to also apologetically explain his Muslimness and Pakistaniat – as if trying to speak one’s mind is a no-go-area and can bring the involved person’s religious and patriotic beliefs into question.

Constant declarations such as, “After all we are all Muslims …” have become mantras of apologia without which a person is exposed to all kinds of accusations by the  keepers of faith and nationalism who can be found in great numbers across large sections of the society, media and the ‘establishment.’

But the progressive and the less religiously demonstrative politicians, journalists and intellectuals are not the only ones forced by this psyche to constantly announce their faith and patriotism.

Artistes, cultural figures and the common man too – especially when they are given a public platform like, for example, television –  find themselves subconsciously and almost instinctively invoking the words, “Islam,” and “Pakistan,” even while talking about a totally secular and unrelated topic.

It is as if each one of them feels that while in front of a camera, more than anything else, it is their religious and patriotic credentials that are being judged.

One can expect this from an actress, a pop star, politicians, cooking show host and common people. The psychological pressure to do so is such that they are bound to add a statement like, “Akhir hum Muslaman aur Pakistani hain” (After all, we are Muslims and Pakistanis), to whatever they may be saying.

This is actually them answering an invisible and unsaid, but nonetheless, forceful question: “Declare your faith?” As if not answering this question can get them accused of being “un-Islamic” and “un-patriotic.”

This is a sad state of affairs. It smells of an elusive and unspoken form of fascism imposed in the name of faith and patriotism. The situation gets even worse when such declarations are ironically not expected from people who perhaps make the biggest mockery of faith and nationalism. These are certain politico-religious figures, conservative personalities and most televangelists.

They seem to be free to distort faith and history, clutter minds with crackpot conspiracy theories, mock intelligence and rationality, and sometimes even instigate hatred and violence – yet not a single question is asked of them.

Nobody is judging their credentials in this respect. Maybe because their declarations in matters of faith and patriotism come in the shape of loud reactionary ranting, hare-brained theories and their “Islamic way of dressing.” As if being a good Muslim and a concerned Pakistani only amounts to being loud, exhibitionistic and self-righteous.

After all, isn’t it true that though the mindset I am talking about is always quick to call an actress “fahash” (obscene), a secular politician “anti-Islam,” a liberal “pro-West,” and an objective/progressive political analyst “anti-Pakistan,” it never bothers to question preachers, fanatics, TV personalities and those televangelists who openly peddle faith and patriotism through hate speeches, reactionary insinuations, reckless conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated gossip?

Think about it.

And by the way, I too must declare: I am a Muslim and a Pakistani.  Just in case.

I would like to describe it as an unhealthy obsession with religion that is carelessly used to not only inflict bodily harm on those considered to be infidels or ‘bad’ Muslims, but to also use it as an excuse to rob, lie, cheat and attempt to maintain manipulated dominance over those considered religiously flawed and inferior. It is also used to describe one’s own professional, social and political shortcomings as something that is due to the intrigues of those who are against Muslims.

Religiomania also constitutes a myopic fixation to preach; it engulfs many from the generic maulvis to those belonging to large outfits like the Tableeghi Jamat and Dawat-i-Islami, the ever-growing number of Islamic televangelists, and all the way to those who just can’t help but roll out numerous emails and text messages on the subject on a daily bases. Growing up in an era in which the whole myth about Islam being in danger has reached a new, unprecedented peak, many Pakistanis’ fixation with religion has at times seen this obsession turn into a rather disruptive allergy.

Even the most educated men and women suddenly become allergic to recognising some obvious truths about what we as a nation and polity have ended up doing in the name of faith and morality. We will wail, moan and whine about Islamophobia in the West, but keep mum over the discrimination and hatred that take place by Muslims against other religions as well as between and within Muslim sects in this country.

This mania has generated a childlike stubbornness in which all avenues of reason and rationality are purposefully blocked. By doing this we are convinced we are dutifully defending our faith, even if this means actually becoming apologists and defenders of the most destructive and inhuman expressions of religious extremism. An extremism of our own making.

Religiomania also includes literally wearing one’s religion loudly and for all to see as if otherwise God won’t be able to judge our religiosity. Take the example of the way many Pakistanis reacted to the niqab ban in France. Some women who use burqa or hijab say they feel liberated. In our media we hear their voices loud and clear, but never of the other side who suggests that a woman who observes hijab/ burqa/ niqab may as well be submitting to the historical Arab tribal male-driven tradition of claiming control over women.

Various Muslim women authors and thinkers believe that the observance of veil remains a dictate of Muslim men. They say that the practice is an outcome of laws and social mores constructed over the last many centuries by judges, ulema and lawmakers who were all men. Muslim women who do not use the veil are right to demand that if some of their sisters in France are so agitated by the veil ban, then they should be equally agitated by the act of enforcing women to wear a veil, a burqa or a chador in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan. It’s only fair, if this really is a matter of the freedom of expression.

While we busy ourselves in discussing the veil issue in France, bemoaning the discrimination faced by Muslim women there who observe the veil, we conveniently forget that in many Muslim countries, women who believe that modesty is a state of mind and can be demonstrated without veiling are coming under increasing pressure. Much of this pressure, of course, is coming from men.

Yet, unveiled women also face a telling pressure from the ever-increasing numbers of veiled women or from even those who wear hijab. This begs the question: Is it really liberation that a woman feels behind a veil, or is this liberation only about liberating oneself from that awkward thought of ever daring to challenge male-dominated interpretations of a woman’s modesty?

In a male-dominated society driven by religiomania such a question can land a woman in trouble, so many may as well submit to the male idea about morality and explain it away as an expression of faith and identity instead of a cop-out. It’s just a question.

Two of the most common comments I receive through emails are: ‘If only Pakistan imposes a true Islamic system, we’ll be able to get rid of the hypocrisies committed in its name.’ Of course, such suggestions are proposed by fellow Pakistanis. The other comment is usually from readers in India or the West. It’s a simple question: ‘Why are Pakistanis always so engrossed in religion?’

I am no scholar (religious or otherwise), but a student of history with a keen interest in understanding it through the lens of cultural anthropology. You see, most of us living in Pakistan have always been advised to look at cultural studies with suspicion. It has been embedded in us that this sort of enquiry leads one to question the very foundations of the country’s ideology.

But the problem is, the less equipped or inclined we are to question what we’ve been told is our ideology, the more one-dimensional remains our understanding of the diverse range of people that reside in Pakistan; and also, we become more venerable to the continuous volley of half-truths and glorified delusions that have been coming our way from dictators, textbooks and the usual media crackpots.

The whole notion of being a country buzzing with ethnic, sectarian and religious diversity becomes something to be afraid of, or something to be repressed with the help of an ideology that has, over the decades, been imposed upon this diversity by a curious nexus of so-called modernist Muslims and their puritanical counterparts. At the centre of this all is an ever-weakening state, which, from 1947 till 1977, shunned recognising the dynamics of Pakistan’s diversity by imposing a nationalistic, Muslim identity. It didn’t work.

In the absence of the kind of rigorous democracy that a diverse nation requires, this all-encompassing Muslim nationalism only ended up alienating the centuries-old cultural moorings of a number of ethnicities in Pakistan. So, as the Baloch, the Sindhis and the Pashtuns rose up in anger, as had done the Bengalis in the former East Pakistan, who eventually decided to rip themselves away from Pakistan’s ideological equation.

Though the anti-diversity dynamics of Muslim nationalism was by and large successful in keeping this ideology’s more radical advocates at bay, the 1971 East Pakistan debacle left this ideology vulnerable to the influence of what was once dismissed as the Islamist fringe.

Gradually, especially with the arrival of the dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq, the ideology’s early modernist Islam was turned on its head when the new ideologues wanted to Islamise the modern. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan gave way to Abul Ala Maududi.

The kind of theological, political and cultural damage this long-winded attitude has inflicted in the past three decades has made the state and governments of Pakistan willing hostages to the abrasive and reactionary ways of the puritanical ideologues. What’s more, today, even some of the most educated young Pakistanis have lost the capacity to question what is dished out to them as Islamic/ Pakistani history and ideology. We are still not prepared to face an obvious truth that may call the very essence and foundation of our so-called ideology into question.

Has not this ideology irst of the modernist ‘One Unit’ Islam variety, and then the exhibitionistic and militarist version of it completely failed to achieve what it wanted to? That is, to turn a diverse Pakistan into a united, ideological whole based on religion.

It was always an over-ambitious and Utopian task. We were never ‘one people.’ The majority of us were Muslims (and still are), but our understanding of faith is intricately linked to and informed by the cultural moorings of our own distinct ethnicities and sects.

Laws and policies cannot be made to succeed based upon the simple idea that all Muslims believe in the same God and the same book. What passes as Islamic law in certain Muslim countries would be an anachronism in Pakistan. Same way, what may be a success (as an Islamic law) in certain areas of the Deobandi dominated Khyber Pakhtunkhwa could be offensive to the Barelvi or Shia of Punjab and Sindh. There has never been a wide-ranging consensus among the sects and ethnicities of Pakistan about the ideology of Pakistan. How can there be?

Shouldn’t the consensus be sought more on recognising the ethnic and sectarian diversity of this country, giving all democratic participants of this diversity as much autonomy as possible (through a fair democratic process) to take responsibility of just how much religion, or what sort of religion (if at all), would every ethnicity and sect want to use in their respective communities’ politics and society? The state’s role should be to make sure that such a national consensus holds and that none of the state’s institutions is allowed to identify with any one ethnic or sectarian group or ideology.

We have to finally recognise (on an official level) that we live in a land of many ethnicities and multiple interpretations of Islam. This phenomenon has to be harnessed and celebrated, not repressed or be afraid of. This very repression has produced nothing but an ideological neurosis that we suffer from today.

In the last thirty years or so, the Urdu word ‘jiyala’ has come down to become an iconic term in the realm of Pakistan’s populist politics. Almost entirely associated (in this context) with diehard supporters and members of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), it is used both as a term of endearment as well as for ideological dogmatism. It continues to attract the curiosity and attention of a number of young Pakistanis.

The PPP jiyala, though sometimes ridiculed by the detractors of the PPP, is largely witnessed as a passionate phenomenon that even the staunchest anti-PPP parties would like to see in their ranks.

So who or what is a PPP jiyala and where did he or she appear from; and why can such people only be found among the PPP’s supporters in spite of the fact that in the last two decades, almost all mainstream political parties have successfully adopted the antics of the country’s first ever purveyor of populist politics, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (the founder of the PPP)?

A jiyala in this respect is a PPP supporter who is bound to stick with the party or with the Bhutto family’s overriding claim over the leadership of the party no matter what state the party is in. He or she would defend it passionately, even fight on the streets and campuses for it, and there have also been cases in which jiyalas have died for the party.

Contrary to the belief, especially among the party’s opponents, that jiyalas are ‘blind followers of the PPP ‘ who unquestionably nod at everything that is dished out to them by the party, the fact is that jiyalas have also been some of the harshest critics of the party that they so intensely love.

There have been a number of reported cases in which jiyalas have publicly confronted the party’s leadership over various issues. According to economist and researcher, Haris Gazdar, who is in the process of conducting an elaborate research on the PPP ‘s support base in the Punjab, the party’s traditional voters remain passive and almost impersonal to the fate of the party when it is in power, but become highly active when it’s in the opposition or facing a challenge from the establishment or the opposition.

Of course, the traditional voters of the PPP that Gazdar was talking about – mainly the rural peasants, small farmers and folks from the urban working classes – are not all jiyalas, but this shift from going passive to active in the context of Gazdar’s initial findings is also reflective of the general jiyala mindset.

Jiyalas are at their most active and passionate when their party is in a crises, especially when the perception is that the crises are being engineered by the military-establishment or an opposing party believed to be working on the behest of the establishment or for the interests of the ‘anti-people’s forces’.

My own experience as an active member of the PPP’s student-wing, the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), between 1984 and 1988 , facilitated my understanding of the above-mentioned quirkiness associated with jiyalas.

My close interaction with the party’s leadership and support (in Karachi and the interior of Sindh), in the mid and late 1980s, saw me being left rather baffled by the way many jiyalas switched from being daring, impassioned and uncritical activists and street fighters during the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship to becoming either disinterested or severely critical of the PPP leadership once the party was voted back into power in November 1988.

During the period when I was heading the PSF at a Karachi college (Saint Patrick’s Govt. College), I met the student wing’s leading member in the city, Najeeb Ahmed, on a couple of occasions and saw him rise to become PSF’s president in Karachi.

He had good relations (as did we all) with the PPP’s Sindh leadership and no questions were ever asked of its decisions. Zia and his supporters were the enemies and the party and the Bhutto family were the victims.

Most differences within the student wing were resolved by the party’s Sindh leadership and questioning these resolutions was like betraying the party’s cause: i.e. avenging Z A. Bhutto ‘s ‘judicial murder’ by the Zia dictatorship; the imposition of socialism and democracy; toppling Zia so that the party could return to power through the votes of the masses.

I remember during the massive rally that Benazir Bhutto held in Lahore after her return from exile in 1986, a group of PSF members began torching an American flag (because the US was supporting the Zia regime) .

Benazir (from the rostrum)  castigated the young men, asking them not to burn the flag because that is what Zia would like to show to the Americans (that what a dangerous militant Benazir was and how she will pull Pakistan out of the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan that the CIA was funding through Zia).

Not a groan or a whine emerged from the flag burners.

It was Benazir, after all – the young daughter of the martyred Bhutto, the brave woman who’d spend years rotting in Zia’s jails and during house arrest, and now here she was, the 32-year-old fighter, taking on a powerful military dictator backed by the US and Pakistani military, the mullahs and rich industrialists; up against a wily tyrant with a proven taste for getting dissidents tortured, publicly flogged and hanged. Questioning her at that stage by a jiyala was next to impossible.

A passionate ideological myopia grips the jiyala when the party is struggling against a conspiring enemy. But what happens when the party outsmarts the enemy and comes to power?

Naheej Ahmed, the president of PSF’s Karachi wing, was born in November 1963, in a lower middle-class, mohajir (Urdu-speaking) family of Karachi. At the age of 23 he rose to become PSF’s president in the city while he was enrolled as a student at the Karachi University.

As I remember him, Najeeb was a highly perceptive and witty man, but also extremely volatile and given to impulsive acts of both bravado as well as outright violence.

Not much of a reader, Najeeb however loved music (especially Jagjit Singh), a good amount of the jolly drink, and was intense about all of his latest romantic escapades (there were many, and anyway, I remember PSF men in those days somehow attracted the most amazing femme fatels).

Though I met him not more than four times, I believe he was also quite conscious of the fact that he was filling the boots of another notorious PSF Karachi President, Salamullah Tipu – a lower-middle-class mohajir hothead who led PSF in Karachi between 1979 and 1981, before shooting dead an Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT) member at the Karachi University and then escaping to Kabul where he joined Murtaza Bhutto’s Marxist guerrilla outfit, the Al -Zulfikar (in 1981).

After hijacking a PIA plane for the outfit, he fell out with Murtaza (during a power struggle within the Al-Zulfikar) and then with the Soviet- backed  Kabul regime. He was shot by a firing squad in a Kabul jail (for murdering an Afghan) in 1984 .

Tipu was feared as a ‘terror’ by the then pro-Zia and well armed  IJT, and Najeeb made sure he was too. Though I remember Najeeb helping us ‘expel’ IJT from our college (there were many injuries but no fatalities in the process), he became more obsessed by the rise of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) and its student wing, the APMSO.

I last saw him at a PSF rally just before the post-Zia 1988 elections, where I advised my batch of the student wing’s contingent to join ranks with an MQM car rally at Boat Basin in Karachi. He screamed at me: ‘Paracha! Why are you doing this? MQM namanzoor! They did not do anything to help us fight Zia!’

Yes, the PPP was close to grabbing power and that switch in the jiyalas from being unquestioning foot soldiers to becoming angry critics had begun.

In early 1989 when the new Benazir regime decided to make the MQM its parliamentary ally, some Urdu dailies carried a report in which Najib was reported to have actually slapped Sindh’s new Chief Minster, Qaim Ali Shah, at a public gathering!

I wasn’t surprised. And neither was I surprised that Benazir did not expel Najib. Contrary to what former PPP jiyala and young advisor to Z A. Bhutto, Raja Anwar, wrote in his otherwise excellent book, ‘The Terrorist Prince’, Benazir never forgot what young PPP/PSF activists went through during her struggle against the Zia regime.

Throughout her two aborted tenures as PM in the 1990s I (this time as a journalist), did not find even a single jiyala who’d publicly whine and groan about her regime’s shortcomings being reprimanded for this.

I  was present on numerous occasions (at Z A Bhutto’s resident in Karachi, ’70 Clifton’), where I saw Bhutto’s widow, late Nusrat Bhutto, addressing the incensed jiyalas‘ complaints, most of whom went right back to passionately defending Benazir every time her regime was toppled through what she said were ‘constitutional coups’ (1991; 1996).

Roots

Today jiyalas come in many shapes and sizes. In fact, anyone prepared to defend the PPP is called a jiyala. It’s become more of an all-encompassing term than an act. As an act it meant an act of passion and defiance against certain oppressive odds.

It is baffling for the current generation of young urbanites to see how the whole concept of sacrifice is glorified in a party like the PPP. But this culture is ripe in most political outfits that appeared during the Cold War when dictators and regimes in third world countries exercised an unabashed exhibition of brute force through torture and summary trials and hangings.

In parties like the PPP, MQM, ANP, many Baloch outfits and now even in PML-N, jail terms, marks of torture and even deaths are eulogized and explained as proofs of the parties’ commitment to a particular struggle.

Of course, such displays of bravado and worship of ‘martyrdom’ is not only alien to the Imran Khan generation, or the Tsunami Generation, but it is seen in a rather distasteful manner.

But this is the kind of culture that was the most passionately embraced by the PPP jiyala. Ironically, in spite of the fact that Z A Bhutto inspired the emergence of a very volatile and emotional brand of supporters, the term jiyala was not in use throughout ZAB’s populist regime (1972-77).

Books written on Bhutto during the period and newspaper reports of the time hardly ever mention this term.

Nevertheless, as authors like Philip Jones (who thoroughly researched the rise of the PPP in ‘Peoples Party’s Rise to Power’), and Oskar Verkkaik (in ‘Migrants  & Militants’), mention in their respective writings, it was the adoption of the bohemian and passionate culture of the malangs and fakirs (spiritual vagabonds) found around the popular shrines of Muslim saints by the early PPP to channel a brand new version of populist politics, that gave birth to what eventually became to be known as the jiyala.

Though Bhutto had a very aristocratic side to him as well, his more ‘awami’ antics and gestures, like the language he used in rallies, the sort of untidy clothing he wore in front of his ‘common audience’, the way he interacted with the peasants and the working classes, all this was a shock to the subdued middle-class decorum or military styled regimentation that had been the norm in the country’s political language and look before him.

Though a distasteful prospect to his opponents, Bhutto was raised by his peasant and working class supporters to the level of becoming a living saint, kind of a modern Lal Shabaz Qalandar, who was seen to have plunged against the tide of the oppressors of the poor with reckless abandon and bravado.

The famous Sufi anthem, ‘Dama-dam Mast Qalandar‘, became a fixture at Bhutto rallies, and his supporters became disciples of this eccentric saint who encouraged them to ridicule middle-class morality as well as the conservatism of the mullah with their particular show of reckless passion.

If one reads Raja Anwar’s ‘The Terrorist Prince’ (a book on Murtaza Bhutto’s Al-Zulfikar), one understands that the term jiyala became a lot more pronounced after the controversial Bhutto regime was toppled in a right-wing military coup orchestrated by General Ziaul Haq in July 1977.

When Anwar talks in detail about young men who actually set themselves on fire to protest against Bhutto’s death sentence by a biased Supreme Court ruling, one can trace the make-up of the original jiyalas.

The original PPP jiyalas mostly belonged to urban working class and lower middle-class backgrounds and were largely from the Punjab and Sindh. They were highly emotional young men, many of whom lost whatever little they had during the Zia regime’s brutal crackdown on PPP workers.

Dozens were publicly flogged, and thousands were tortured in jails across the late 1970s and 1980s. The jiyalas were the PPP’s most active and selfless foot soldiers on the streets and on campuses during Zia’s iron-fisted dictatorship.

Another little known fact about jiyalas is that during the testing times that the party faced in that period, the jiyalas, though always ready to heed any call by the party leadership, were given a lot of say in how the party was being run in their areas of influence.

When by 1985 it became clear that Benazir was to have the greatest influence in party affairs, this was a move aggressively forwarded and endorsed by the jiyalas.

The reason for this was not only the fact that she had impressed them with the way she withstood Zia’s jails between 1977 and 1984, but also because the jiyalas – scores of whom that had died, were tortured or jailed during the 1981 and 1983 anti-Zia movements initiated by the PPP-led Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) – were not happy with the way the PPP’s old leadership had conducted itself during the agitation.

For example, when I entered college in 1984 and joined PSF, one of my first political acts in this respect was to accompany a group of PSF lads to the home of a senior PPP leader and ask him to hire the services of a lawyer who could bail out PSF members who had been picked up by the police from the college premises.

For days the leader kept us occupied with hollow promises. In the meanwhile, a violent episode erupted between PSF and IJT in which a PSF member was shot and wounded. Of course, it was him that the cops picked up!

Not only was a lawyer arranged by a low level PPP person, but we were also handed a cache of arms to keep IJT at bay – which we eventually did, but that’s another story.

On taking full control of the PPP, Benazir began purging the party’s old guard. We actually rejoiced because they had slept through the 1983 MRD movement. During the process we complained to the party’s Sindh leadership about the leader who had been giving us the run around. Lo and behold, soon we heard that Benazir (who was still in exile), had eased him out as well.

The jiyala mystique and romanticism peaked when Benazir returned from exile, but after the 1988 elections, her interaction with the jiyalas began to lessen. It was as if, with Zia dead, and his legacy avenged by the coming into power of Bhutto’s daughter, the jiyala mission exhausted itself.

Then the deadly tussle between PSF and APMSO in the early 1990s, in which both sides lost scores of young men (including Najeeb), Benazir made a conscious effort to once and for all, eliminate the more militant dimensions of jiyalaism that had emerged during the party’s struggle with the establishment in the 1980s.

Ever since the 1990s, the PPP jiyala is no more than a rally organizer, or if he is close to the leadership, he becomes part of its security apparatus. Mind you, many of them are still willing to die for the party, as witnessed in the way they stood between Benazir and suicide bombers in Karachi and Rawalpindi in 2007.

Also, contrary to popular belief, the party’s post-BB chairperson, Asif Ali Zardari, has had more interaction with the jiyalas, than BB did in the late 1990s.

There are still a number of the classic jiyalas to be found. But what happened to the original ones who thrived during adversity between 1977 and 1988?

Many were killed. Many experienced police torture and jail and when they were released after Zia’s death, they bid farewell to politics. Many vanished from their homes and colleges, never to be found. Some even became leaders and the party’s representatives in the Parliament and the Senate.

But as a former PSF comrade of mine who quit politics all together in 1990 recently told me, ‘no matter how much of a distance a jiyala would like to put between himself and the party, a jiyala will always remain a jiyala. It’s a spiritual state as well as a dilemma.’

I mean, the cat has certainly not popped out of the bag so openly before. In other words, there has always been talk of how the military — ever since Yahya Khan’s misadventures in the former East Pakistan, and especially ever since the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship — has been playing footsie with radical Islamist parties to undermine any force supposedly threatening the country’s sovereignty. Of course, sovereignty in this specific context usually means safeguarding the political and institutional hegemony and influence of the establishment and of ‘Pakistan ideology’, manufactured by the establishment (with the help of the once anti-Jinnah ulema and their urbane ideologues) from the 1970s onwards.

JuD rally, Lahore

It reached its propagated peak during Zia’s time and now is a mindless populist slogan that actually means nothing, really. Ever since Pakistan’s entry in the global ‘war on terror’ (post-9/11), its armed forces have been at pains to explain to the concerned world that the country’s military and especially its intelligence agencies have nothing to do with the violent psychos who’ve been blowing up mosques, shrines and markets and slaughtering civilians in the name of jihad; and nor is the military in league with hate-spouting sectarian organisations.

Yet there they were on December 18, eulogising the military, these political faces and the overt apologists and sympathisers of precisely the kind of barbarity and the barbarians the military says it has no links to and is at war with. Catch-22, indeed. Because if such are the forces that the military has used much of our tax money, US military aid and common frontline soldiers to fight against, then prey tell, why on December 18, were men who glorify terrorists seen polishing medals of an army that has fought a prolonged counter-insurgency with those whom these men consider a collective reincarnation of Muhammad Bin Qasim?

In the aftermath of the humiliation that the military had to face in the event of the Raymond Davis issue, the Osama discovery, the Mehran Base attack (by Islamist terrorists) and finally the Nato attack on Pakistani soldiers, has the establishment finally let go of its pretence about being an institution that (after 9/11) had discarded its baggage of being a much radicalised and reactionary outfit? According to some observers of military politics, such as Najam Sethi, Hasan Askari, Ahmed Rashid and Ayesha Siddiqa, both conventional and clandestine Islamist outfits usually pour out onto the streets with given a tactical wink by the establishment as and when required.

The reasons behind this have usually to do with the establishment wishing to whip up emotions against a democratic regime that it is not happy with or to brew widespread sentiment against either India or the US. If so, then this sudden unity and pouring out of both mainstream as well as shady Islamist groups, pro-establishment politicians, ex-ISI men and even some media personnel praising the military whilst sounding like Islamised Kim Il Sungs, is a cause for concern.

Are these the only kind of men that the military, ever since Yahya’s initial patronage of the Jamat-i-Islami in 1970-71, been able to attract as a constituency? Forget about the US concerns (a country which, till the 1980s, was actually an encouraging partner in Pakistani military’s growing infatuation with Islamists), and also forget about Indian pangs as well. The concern should be ours first.

Any rational Pakistani should be worried. Worried that today a lethal battery of nuclear warheads lies surrounded by an enigmatic military now being carried on the shoulders of men who applaud murderers of men accused of ‘blasphemy’, spit obscenities at actresses visiting India but refuse to condemn those who have mercilessly slaughtered over 36,000 soldiers, civilians and women and children.