IT was as if the gods had decreed: let Thursday be the day of rejoicing and Friday, starting at the stroke of midnight, one of mourning. This is how tenuous the political scene is in Pakistan. It is so because a few have chosen to play God – all in His way, showering mercies one day and wrath the other. And the rulers have been ordained to look the other way.

Those who died in the carnage enacted at Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming shall remain nameless, including some 50 of her ill-fated guards deputed to protect her. Others surrounding her convoy were the dispossessed, dancing in ecstasy just before they went down. Then the scourge which they had bargained for struck: they had asked for a voice for a day before returning to oblivion.

They had come to Karachi from across the country. A strange mix of hope attached, and devotion to the phenomenon called ‘Bhutto’ glittered in their eyes, their bodies swinging to the dance of death till it embraced them. Their remains shall be carried back to their homes, far, far away. The less fortunate, in death as in life, shall be buried where they fell. Bar mazar-i-ma ghariban, nei chiraghe, nei gule (at my forsaken grave, no lamps shall be lit, no flowers showered). The rest is political commentary.

What does Friday’s attempt on her life leave Benazir Bhutto with? Hopefully, a bit more than just more martyrs in her party’s fold, and a yearning for sympathy vote. Tragedies spanning her turbulent political career and threats to her life need no repetition. It would be the wrong foot to start on. Dwelling on accusations of the kind hastily voiced by spouse Zardari, given his reputation for recklessness, too, will not do the party much good either. Hope is the news the teeming millions want to hear from her, not despair.

The task ahead is strewn with challenges, dangers and, much ambivalence, at the very best. Here is a party that claims to be widely representative on national basis, which in turn makes it the only party to take up the many challenges Pakistan faces today. That ‘they hate our freedom and democracy’ is an accusation easier levelled than practical steps taken to ensure that ‘they’ do not prevail.

There are chinks in Ms Bhutto’s armour, but that’s the armour she has willingly donned. On the one hand stand the extremists with whom she shares feelings of mutual disgust; on the other are her political adversaries sitting in the power saddle which many of them now feel is slipping from under them. That the latter have a soft corner for the extremists is no secret: remember the lifelong scholarships offered by the Chaudhries of Punjab to the remnants of the Lal Masjid brigade?

Closer home, the Sindh chief minister has made no secret either of love lost for Bhutto or his affinity with rightwing views that he wears on his sleeve. The MQM has yet to make its position clear on Bhutto’s homecoming, more so on her staying here, after the dust kicked up by the ‘goodwill’ shown by the party on Thursday at the instance of Mr Altaf Hussain’s hosts in the UK settles. The signals on the mobile phones carried by close associates of Ms Bhutto who were travelling in her truck allegedly never went out, but street lights along the entire route did. She has, thus, with some justification questioned the efficacy of the jamming devices which the government said it had provided to plug attempts at blowing up her vehicle by remote-controlled bombing.

These are questions that should be asked and their answers sought. The ballistic rhetoric emanating from Bhutto’s political opponents in the ruling party should have been, but was not, curbed. Instead, ministers and chief ministers were let loose to voice their ire before and after Bhutto’s plane touched down. This, despite the federal cabinet’s, and hence the government’s, approval of the conditions under which Gen Musharraf accepted Bhutto’s right to return to Pakistan. Is it now clear that the General was alone in wishing her to return?

If so, he should find the attempt by his erstwhile colleagues at making him feel lonely and stuck with his decision somewhat humbling, and a foretaste of the politics they will subject him to once he doffs his military uniform. What does this signal to the lonely man in khakis? Martial law? Not if he keeps his sanity, which is the best friend he may still have to count on in the days ahead as the court juggles with the legitimacy of his candidacy as the president for a second term in office.

The past two days’ events in Karachi should serve to remind the army that while democratic public participation brings joy and hope to the people, growing extremism and bad governance that have defined the system tailor made under military’s tutelage only bring death and destruction. The pragmatic, new beginning made by reaching out to Bhutto should be allowed to take its course rather than be stomped and the country taken back to 1999, if not even further back in time. The current system has failed to arrest the growth of extremism because the pseudo-democratic process put in place is not up to the job.

For Ms Bhutto’s part, it is now up to her to build on the symbolism inherent in her triumphant homecoming to a rousing welcome by people from across the country and the flagrant disrespect shown to it by the extremists. The people’s jury, in her case, has spoken before the court did. If she fails to build on this opportunity by henceforth restricting herself to the secure confines of Bilawal House or TV studios, she might as well take the next flight back to Dubai.

One says this because leading a people who have not seen hope in a long time requires more than just protecting oneself from the dangers which are all too obvious, and which everyone believed formed the necessary part of Bhutto’s political itinerary. Those in charge of her logistics should ensure that she is able to make public appearances as often as needed without stretching the limits of what the people must endure to catch a glimpse of their leader. Instead of leading snail-paced rallies, for instance, she should be conveyed to a security-combed venue for a public meeting at the appointed hour. The security apparatus does so for the ruling party and the president all the time.

The road ahead to democracy may be littered with potholes and set up with booby traps. But there is no short cut to the destination it leads to. The time is now to dismantle the discredited system presided over by trigger-happy rulers who are part of the problem, not the solution to the extremism and despondency staring Pakistan in the face. In both political and financial terms, keeping the current set of rulers in power is a heavy liability. The loss incurred by the people in terms of radicalisation of public discourse and debate, and the national exchequer, as the rulers show off their achievements over prime time TV using taxpayers’ hard earned money, should be checked and stopped forthwith.

‘WHICH side of the barricade are you on?’ This was the question posed to the intelligentsia by Maxim Gorky, during the mid-thirties of the last century, when fascism was on the rampage in Europe. This query is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago in as much as the threats facing humanity due to conflicts, ecological disasters, mass illiteracy, poverty, disease and an ever-deepening economic crisis are the breeding grounds for fascism.

Each one of us, especially those whose duty is to do intellectual work, must stand up and be counted. There can be no spectators in the titanic struggle that goes on between the forces of democracy, social justice, enlightenment and tolerance on the one hand and the forces of fanaticism, dogmatism and exploitation on the other.

The war on the ‘intelligentsia’ is Russian in origin — the intelligentsia being a class of intellectuals possessing culture and political initiative. According to Isaiah Berlin, ‘The phenomena of intelligentsia with its historical and literary revolutionary consequences is the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.’ During the 19th century, the members of the Russian intelligentsia thought of themselves as united by something more than mere interest in ideas. They considered themselves as being a dedicated order, devoted to the spreading of a specific attitude to life.

The Russian intelligentsia had accepted the doctrine that everyone was called upon to perform a mission beyond the selfish purpose of material existence. Since they had an education superior to their oppressed brethren, they had a direct duty to help them towards the light.

Intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, injustice, fraud, illusion, vested interest or dogma is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class. Intellect is the critical, creative, contemplative side of the mind. It examines, ponders, wonders, criticises, imagines and theorises.

Intellect looks for the meaning of a situation as a whole. It has a grasp on historic perspective and the interplay of the dialectic. Marx proclaimed: ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world so far; the point, however, is how to change it.’

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place. Is this true of all ideas? Ideas can be reactionary, conservative and defenders of the status quo. Not all men of ideas are progressive and innovators. Quite a number of them are dyed-in-the-wool opportunists and time-servers. An intellectual is one who does not live off ideas but for ideas — and even dies for them. Socrates epitomises such an intellectual.

The intellectuals emerged as a force to be reckoned with in modern history during the 18th century when the Encyclopaedists tolled the bell for the French Revolution (1789) by awakening the people from the dogmatic slumber of the mediaeval ages. They broke the stranglehold of the priests on the hearts and the minds of the people by spreading the ideas of liberty, equity, fraternity, rationalism, tolerance and humanism.

The term ‘intellectual’ first came to be used in France. It came into vogue during the Dreyfus case, when numerous writers were aroused to protest against the conspiracy. It was used by the Left as a loud banner and by the right as an insult. ‘Let us use this word,’ said one leftist writer, ‘since it has received high consecration.’

When McCarthyism was on the rampage in the US, it was Eisenhower who ridiculed an intellectual as a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.

Anti-intellectualism is an inevitable concomitant of fascism, fanaticism, and obscurantism, which can flourish only in an atmosphere surcharged with irrationalism, fanaticism and dogmatism. Ideas are the means by which a society comes to terms with changing reality. Our volatile and tempestuous society stands in need of ideas which comprehend the present, draw lessons from the past and anticipate the future.

Comprehension of the present is impossible without perception, and anticipation of the future demands vision. Herein lies the importance of men of ideas and vision i.e. the intelligentsia.The crisis of confidence in our society comes in part from a growing sense of the dissociation between idea and power. On the one hand, the spread of corruption challenges the belief in the efficacy of reason; on the other, authoritarianism in every walk of life intensifies the feeling of individual impotence. The accelerating pace of social change heightens the impression of the times being out of joint.

We find ourselves the helpless victims of the velocity of history and of the endless machinations of unscrupulous leaders. The fear that ideas have failed as a means of social control haunts the intelligentsia. However, this predicament of the intelligentsia in a world of power is not new. The Greeks made an attempt to find ways of associating the intellect with the state: the philosopher as the critic of the power as exemplified by Socrates; the philosopher as the tutor of the prince as represented by Aristotle; the philosopher as king as pronounced by Plato.Right from the dawn of history, ideas have often been part of the world of power. The Brahmins in India, the Mandarins in China and the ulema in Islamic history wielded power as advisers, civil servants and dispensers of justice.

Carlyle wrote ‘The hero as a man of letters’ and eulogised him in his unique way: ‘This hero is altogether a product of these new ages. He is new, I say: he has hardly lasted about a century. Yet, never till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a great soul, living apart in that anomalous manner: endeavouring to speak forth the inspiration that was in him by printed books.’

The intellectuals in Pakistan are heholden to the teeming millions of poverty-stricken masses who are shackled economically and spiritually by the chains of feudalism, comprador bourgeoisie and the obscurantist priests. Basically the task of the Pakistani intellectuals is the same as that of the Encyclopaedists during the 18th century, who dealt a fatal blow to mediaevalism. They have not only to interpret our society in a new way but they are committed to changing it.

LIKE several other ‘diehard and sincere’ activists of the Pakistan People’s Party, my friend — the angry old man of PPP whom I quoted in my last piece — did not bother to attend the October 18 rally, a celebration of democracy that turned into a bloodbath. Now he believes that it is high time for the political leadership in Pakistan to ‘renounce the policy of war on terror’.

He is also very sad and furious that the people of Sindh, despite bitter experiences of the past, are still clinging to the PPP. Someone should tell him that the people are not as naïve as he thinks and that they have a better understanding of the dynamics of a political process than those judging a political scenario from their cosy drawing rooms. They have proved as much again and again.

When my friend said that the people of Sindh had become hostage to Benazir Bhutto, I interrupted saying that they did not have any other option. He replied that instead of waiting for a door to open, the masses themselves should create a new path. Again he was mistaken. People follow and do not lead; the masses don’t form organisations, they give strength to them; they don’t launch an agitation, they run it and give their sweat and blood to a struggle.

The fourth point of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s PPP manifesto was: Taqat ka sarchashma awam hain. (people are the source of power.) Their peaceful rallies lead to change in civilised parts of the world, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the collapse of the Soviet ‘totalitarian’ state and the fall of the Berlin Wall being examples. These wretched of the earth have the power to move mountains. These weaklings can sustain any form of violence — life itself is an unending dehumanising torture for them — and they can defeat the mightiest on earth. Despotic regimes like the Shah’s in Iran cannot face the wrath of the people. They crumble to dust when empty-handed multitudes refuse to budge before mighty tanks.

But the masses don’t create options. This task belongs to the educated elite or the middle class. People can only choose a political party. In a vacuum, their sagacity lies in choosing the best from among the available lot. This is what the people of Sindh and of Pakistan did in elections after 1988, the last farce electoral exercise being an exception.

During her earlier return (from real and not self-imposed) exile, Benazir Bhutto was received in Lahore by one million people, most of whom were willing to lay down their lives at a single command of their ‘persecuted’ leader. Several still bear the marks of the Zia regime’s lashes on their backs and other forms of torture on sensitive parts of their bodies. Ask anybody who had witnessed that historic event and he would tell you that on that day Benazir Bhutto could easily have brought about a revolution. (Defending a revolution is the second and more challenging part of the game.)

But she is not a revolutionary like her sentimental brothers, and that was why Papa (ZAB) gave preference to his Pinky as far as his political legacy was concerned, and, in a patriarchal society, declared his daughter his political heir. He knew that she had what was essential in politics: a cool mind.

So she adopted her father’s way by choosing the democratic path and opting for elections. After wining the elections, she was offered a deal: a powerless premiership with conditions that she would not reopen her father’s case, would accept an establishment-picked president and would never ‘interfere’ in defence and foreign affairs. She swallowed the bait and it was the first of the series of ‘Brutusian’ betrayals of democracy and the people on her part. As a result, democracy, which appeared like light at the end of the tunnel, turned out to be Faiz Sahib’s ‘stained light, night-bitten morning’.

The latest stopover of the train of betrayal is another deal and that too with a fallen god. But, the democracy-loving people of Sindh, with their brethren from other parts of Pakistan, again arranged a magnificent welcome for her. (Even if the numerical strength of the rally was less than that of the 1986 Lahore rally, the former was more impressive than the latter, given the background of both the events.)

It is because of this fact that the pragmatic people of Pakistan feel that despite her weaknesses, Benazir Bhutto and the PPP stand for democracy; and the masses and the rising middle class of Sindh — who have been trapped between the high waters of feudalism/tribalism in villages and the fire of ethnic discrimination in the cities — believe that only the PPP can partially rescue them.

Benazir Bhutto has returned with an olive branch in her hand and a message of peace, reconciliation and accommodation for everyone. Thursday’s rally was an electrifying manifestation of peaceful people’s power. But the enemies of peace used this happy occasion to convey their message of death and destruction to everyone, including the PPP leadership.

On Friday, Benazir’s annoyed ‘brothers’ reacted with public protests from Lyari to Kashmor, reviving memories of the valiant movement for the restoration of democracy in 1983. Shouldn’t Benazir Bhutto realise that with the masses who were the darling of her father, these fearless comrades and ‘uncompromising’ leaders like Aitzaz Ahsan are the real power of her party? With the start of her affair with the establishment, she has lost a good number of true jiyalas and some respectables like Mubashar Hasan, each time she had a ‘brief’ stint in government after 1988. She must ensure that these ‘endangered species’ are preserved and not lost.

If Benazir Bhutto wants to survive politically, she should steer her party to its origin by re-adopting her father’s programme and the PPP should regain its 1970s character when it promised basic rights like roti, kapra aur makan to everyone, meaning the mitigation of poverty and not the elimination of the poor. Peace and prosperity are the new slogans of her party.

The gory blast has taken the wind out of her hollow promise of peace which cannot be achieved in a brutally unjust society based on different forms of indiscrimination, and where the yawning gap between the poor and the rich is widening with each passing day and devouring precious human lives in the not-so-rare collective suicides of destitute families. Meanwhile, the national economy grows. By continuing to support World Bank and IMF-dictated programmes of de-nationalisation and downsizing of national institutions, she cannot bring prosperity to the country.

Everybody knows that she cannot become Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who defied not only the military but also had the nerves to confront the mighty US). But she could and should at least become Benazir Bhutto of the 1980s.

abbas.jalbani@gmail.com