http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\08\26\story_26-8-2012_pg3_2
Sunday, August 26, 2012
COMMENT : Doing evil completely and cheerfully — Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
The despicable and reprehensible jubilation and gloating that follows the most
inhuman of sectarian attacks insults human dignity thoroughly
The reason for the rapid pace at which fundamentalism has engulfed society is
because the state deliberately sponsored and proliferated the regressive
ideology of its religion’s superiority and allowed fundamentalism to devour the
fragile body of religious tolerance, civil liberties and secularity. These
trends were targeted because it wanted to impose its own religio-nationalist
ideology and identity, while in these trends were seeds of identities and ideas
radically opposed to that destructive ideology. To allow its ideology and
identity to prosper, it desperately and urgently needed to crush the culture,
history, languages and freedoms of the nationalities and minorities that
resided here for centuries before the creation of this state.
Knowing that without imposition of its ideology the old nations would resist
its hegemony and illegal rule, the indoctrinators employed the principle of
Voltaire’s thought: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you
commit atrocities.” To ensure that the majority would believe the absurdity
they presented as truth, they passed the Objectives Resolution on March 12,
1949, which guaranteed a state favouring the establishment’s ideology. The
state relentlessly and single-mindedly used the pulpit, the press, education
system and all instruments of coercion, i.e. the army, police and bureaucracy,
to implement it. With unlimited resources at their disposal, they not only
succeeded in marginalising the contending ideologies, trends, ideas and
cultures but also succeeded in intimidating most proponents of opposing
thoughts and movements.
The indoctrinators systematically imbued people with a manufactured nationalist
ideology, which could not walk a step without the crutches of religion.
Diversity they abhorred and punished. Deftly using the slogan of Islam, they
deprived the Baloch of their rights and gave Bengal its language martyrs. The
Baloch, Bengalis, Sindhis and minorities were relegated to a second-class
citizenry, while those who subscribed to state ideology were amply rewarded.
Thus were the seeds sown for all that is being reaped today. It would have been
a miracle if a tolerant society had emerged from the dedicated and devoted
efforts of the establishment to sow discord among nations and sects in the name
of Islam.
Their attempt to create a monolithic state on the basis of a monolithic
ideology resulted in increasing intolerance of nationalist aspirations,
religious freedoms and of all manifestations and expressions of diversity. To
ensure its success, the Pakistani state sowed hate, intolerance and bigotry in
the minds and hearts of people. This pernicious intolerance has demonstrated
itself in the army operations, abductions and killings of the Baloch and
Sindhis, sectarian suicide bombings, sectarian carnage, mob lynching on flimsy
charges of alleged blasphemy, curtailment of minorities’ rights, forced
conversions and exodus of minorities.
One cannot expect tolerance towards nationalities and minorities to flourish
when the education imparted is not only biased but brazenly racist, jingoistic
and bigoted. The generations educated since 1947 have been nurtured to believe
in the superiority of state religion and all official narrative has been about
the superiority of the majority sect. Irfan Hussain in a piece wrote that young
officers at the military academy at Kakul among other things were indoctrinated
with “the notion that one Muslim soldier is equal to 10 Hindus.” Naturally,
those thus indoctrinated would only impart the same to others. Moreover, the
clergy — the state’s natural ally — was given free rein to prosper, profit and
spread hate. Little wonder in Bangladesh fundamentalists fought nationalists
and participated in state atrocities against Bengalis. The army and Frontier
Corps in Balochistan also claim Islam as their motivator.
The rulers claimed superiority over others not because of any achievement of
theirs but simply because they were Muslims. Although it invited Arab ridicule
who asked what contribution does a Pakistani have in Alhambra or Algebra, yet
they prided in identifying themselves with past Arab achievements. Indebted to
Saudi Arabia’s largesse, they subscribed to its interpretation of Islam. In an
attempt to prove their loyalty to Islam, they adopted radicalism to endear
themselves to the Arab world, ended up creating ‘strategic assets’ and becoming
a scourge for humanity as terror exporters, suicide bombers and a sectarian
killers’ haven.
The persecution of minorities and the fanning of sectarian fires naturally
followed the persecution and repression of nationalities and were its natural
corollary. Most people, minorities included, did not oppose the persecution and
repression of the Baloch, Bengalis and Sindhis in the name of Islam, oblivious
to the fact that it was the harbinger of similar treatment for them. All like
Pastor Martin Niemöller’s quote: “First they came for the communists...”
realised late that persecutors of nationalities would soon come after them.
They did not realise that their interests coincided with the oppressed
nationalities because the state and its strategic assets considered them too as
enemies and a threat to their ideology.
The reason for the miserable life of nationalities and minorities due to the
Pakistani state’s policies and attitudes have been remarkably well explained by
C S Lewis, whom I have quoted in the past: “Of all tyrannies a tyranny
exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be
better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The
robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end
for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Pakistan is an
embodiment of robber barons and omnipotent moral busy bodies.
The state spawned and nurtured bigoted strategic assets for use in Kashmir and
Afghanistan to fulfil their aims of a ‘national security state’ and ‘strategic
depth’. Unable to achieve much on those fronts and having tasted power and
pelf, these strategic assets have now turned upon innocents to quench the
bloodthirstiness that they were fostered for. The sectarian attacks on Hazaras
and Shias in Balochistan, the killing of Shias in Babusar and elsewhere, and
the persecution of Christians and Ahmedis are all the natural corollary of the
state’s pursued agenda and blame lies with it. The despicable and reprehensible
jubilation and gloating that follows the most inhuman of sectarian attacks
insults human dignity thoroughly. Fortunately, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the
French writer and Catholic philosopher, explained the reason: “People never do
evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it in the name of their
religion.” Pakistan, al Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
and Anders Breivik are prime examples.
The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the
early 1970s. He tweets at mmatalpur and can be contacted at [email protected]
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