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ON Friday, police deployment in Lahore and elsewhere attempted to stifle a protest by women from Okara’s restive military farms. Reports from activists and journalists on the ground suggested 50 Anjuman-i-Mazareen Punjab members were arrested and whisked away in the build-up. These arrests are the latest in a series of steps taken by various government and military institutions to short-circuit a vibrant tenants’ movement for land rights in central Punjab.
Despite all sorts of repressive measures, Friday’s demonstration serves as another testament to the dedication and perseverance of the farmers and their allies from progressive political groups. The conflict is now in its 16th year, and lesser mortals would’ve given up much sooner in the face of such daunting odds and bleak prospects.
At the outset, the legal issue of land rights, ownership, and tenancy relations in military-run farms has been covered in detail on these pages and elsewhere. My concern here, however, is with a pattern that emerges in the state’s response to different kinds of public agitation.
On the one hand, you have various religious organisations running amok through the federal and provincial capitals demanding state-sanctioned glorification of a convicted murderer, or openly asking for the (further) suppression of women’s rights. The government submissively asks them to stay away from certain locations, to which they respond with a definitive ‘no’. Deadline after deadline is issued, each one ignored with increasing aplomb.
In previous incidents of a similar nature, the government’s requests to maintain public peace and the sanctity of private and public property were also ignored with great derision — most memorably during the anti-blasphemy protests a few years ago.
The state’s reaction to the protesters is akin to a bully who picks on the weakest in class.
At the other end, paramedic workers asking for something as benign as regularisation of employment, or farmers seeking a more equitable land tenure arrangement are harassed, subjected to tear gas, water cannons, and public thrashings. The movement leaders are arrested under anti-terrorism laws, denied access to basic legal rights, and in many instances, tortured while in custody.
This paradox of some protesting groups being treated like royalty and others like vermin deserves to be questioned in detail. What determines the state’s response to public agitation, and hence ultimately, what factors determine the relative success or failure of those seeking some form of change?
One plausible explanation is that the state’s reaction is determined by perceptions of its own strength and relative security. Following from this, it appears increasingly clear that the response to various protests in the past few months resembles that of a weak and thoroughly insecure state.
When rampaging mullahs threaten public peace, the state backs off because it knows full well it is currently incapable of handling the ideological and physical fallout of an actual confrontation. Having allowed religious organisations to fester, multiply, and consolidate, the state’s capacity to regulate their actions and to wish them away stands considerably diminished. The Lal Masjid’s continued, anti-state provocations on a number of public issues, and the government’s inaction, are perhaps the clearest indicator of this phenomenon.
Secondly, mainstream religious organisations possess a long and illustrious history of providing intellectual and moral legitimacy to the Pakistani state. Whether it’s through formal politics or in the domain of everyday life, many segments of the religious right are more than happy to ignore — and in some cases even legitimise — the unequal economic structures propping up the rich and the powerful.
This relationship of convenience between the elites and the mullahs goes all the way back to the independence movement, and while fundamentalism and militancy has fractured it a bit in recent years, there is little to suggest that religion’s utility as a source of public legitimacy stands diminished.
On the other hand, you have poor farmers and working class employees who have no backlash to offer. They can be dealt with in whatever manner deemed fit because few segments of society will complain, mainstream news media will gloss over it, and the international press is least likely to offer any attention. They can be taught a lesson because they are poor, under-resourced, and have no connections with important decision-makers. All things considered, the state’s reaction to them is akin to a bully who picks on the weakest in class to demonstrate his strength.
This bullying behaviour, nonetheless, begs another question. If these people are so poor and helpless, why bother with them in the first place? Why not ignore them, allow them to make their demands, and let them be?
The answer to that lies in the state’s pervasive sense of insecurity. Elites are okay with most types of religious actors because they don’t pose a direct challenge to their privilege. In fact, they are more likely to justify that privilege using religion and divine fate.
However, poor people asking for their rights and demanding something from the state undermines the very structure on which the powerful are currently perched. If they’re allowed to mobilise effectively, if their numbers on the street start to grow, and if their demands become more and more assertive, it could very well pose a challenge to decades of well-protected privilege. If the state gives in to the demand of land rights by one group, what’s going to stop factory workers from asking for higher wages, or informal labourers from asking for social security and better working conditions?
A scenario in which the poor become full, rights seeking and bearing citizens in Pakistan is nothing short of dystopian for the elite. Having experienced one round of popular mobilisation during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the state spent the 1980s doing everything to ensure a recurrence never takes place. And given the treatment meted out to the activists from Okara, we can safely conclude that the elite’s dystopian scenario will not be allowed to become real anytime soon.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Twitter: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2016
