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A month in, and they’re still sitting there in D-chowk. Whatever one can speculate about the nakedly personal ambitions of our two demagogues on their shipping containers, the hopes of their followers are clear: change, in any shape or form that can be brought about.
In the rest of Pakistan, a lot of people are talking about how dangerous a precedent has been set through the words and means Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri have chosen in their quest for change: calls for ‘civil disobedience’, for refusals to pay taxes, utility bills, etc, for assaults on representatives of the law, for raids on government buildings that are restricted to members of the public, and so on — in short, the breaking of very many laws.
Also Read: Imran’s surprising call for civil disobedience
If any group — on this occasion the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) — believes that a government can be forced to accede to its demands through sheer force of numbers on the streets, what’s to prevent any other group, one that may not be a political party or be invested in the democratic process or even be legitimate, using the same tactic?
What’s to prevent a group that wants to impose a regressive brand of religiosity, for example, on the country, or wants to force all women behind the chador chardiwari, or shut down all schools, from doing the same thing and taking over by force?
Such groups — as Pakistan is all too aware — already exist in the country, and already pose a frightening threat.
A dangerous precedent has been set by PTI and PAT.
But the danger of the precedent set by the two parties goes beyond this. To understand, let us revisit Social Theory 101, and the idea of the ‘social contract’ postulated by Thomas Hobbes and others and that has been with us for well over three centuries.
In a nutshell, the social contract theory postulates that civil rights in a governed polity are neither natural rights nor permanent. Hobbes wrote that man’s ‘natural’ state without a political government would be of every man being in a state of war against every other, competing over resources.
So, between the state and citizens there is an unwritten contract: the state offers civil rights that include basic necessities such as economic and other infrastructure, amenities, security, recourse to justice, etc; in return, citizens submit to the rule of law formulated by the state, agree to play by the rules and contain their base tendencies to live free and unfettered, to the mutual benefit of all.
Since civil rights are a consequence of agreeing to the contract, those who choose to disregard their contractual obligations (such as by committing crimes) abdicate their rights and are subject to punishment by society that must protect the greater good.
The idea of the social contract became central to the notion, now associated with democracy, that legitimate state authority has to be derived from the consent of the governed.
Has the state of Pakistan over the course of its history, as represented by all its governments whether civilian or military, been fulfilling the requirements of the contract that makes it viable?
Very many would argue that it has not. The level of want in the country takes one’s breath away, and is so apparent that it doesn’t bear recounting here.
Suffice it to say that for the average man on the street, things are not just bad but have steadily worsened, with no end in sight other than an ignominious death.
And on the other hand — perhaps as a result — citizens too are increasingly more willing to ignore their part of the deal (follow the rule of law), rising levels of criminality, militancy and secessionist tendencies being indicators. So in Pakistan we have a situation where, in the absence of civil rights that don’t seem to be forthcoming, people are fending for themselves regardless of consequences to the greater good.
But Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri’s plan of action has taken things to another level altogether. Despite the dismal reality outlined here, the fact used to be that a lawbreaker was identified as and, more importantly, recognised himself as someone who was choosing (regardless of his justifications) to behave in contravention to the rules.
But the PTI and PAT have blurred the boundaries to the extent that the onus of the lawbreakers’ actions has been made to rebound on the state itself; their actions have been rendered right.
Put simply, the fig leaf of the social contract has been dispensed with, in a country where it was weak enough to begin with.
As a consequence, what visions of anarchy and greed have been unleashed, one where each man is at war against the other and there is no concept of greater or mutual good, only time will tell. Certainly there will be plenty of time to rue.
The writer is a member of a staff.
Published in Dawn, September 15th , 2014
