The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

SOME of our ‘progressive’ activists are in a perpetual state of despondency — apart from those who might momentarily come out of depression at a selected moment to bravely chant a slogan demanding, if nothing more ideologically solid, objectivity and fairness. They are the kind you find demonstrating for fair treatment for those who have been picked up recently with unclear motive. The most plausible explanation for their disappearance is that they have been picked up by some agency which was not pleased by what they expressed and/or how they expressed it.

Some of them are so bereft of hope that, just 20 days into it, they are all ready to declare 2017 a nastier, uglier year than 2016, especially for the more ‘tolerant’ and the more ‘democratic’. They cite a whole series of comparable instances from the past to drive home the point about the current situation, in which — like always — they find more than one institution and more than one individual at the top asserting to secure their ‘rightful’ vantage place in the Pakistani scheme of things.

A presumption is in situations such as these, of which this country has had more than its fair share, is that tensions in society are generally higher than when institutions and the individuals leading them are complementing each other. It is when the most contentious issues come to the fore that the feeling of division is at its most acute.


The system routinely comes up with positive stories to serve to those who still believe in its efficacy.


One extreme view finds the state continuing to unravel. Its crucial falling-out parts choose to stand by those who must oppress and coerce and stifle and frame and plot in the name of national interest and, failing that, for the sake of religion.

They want the law to protect them only to realise later that the law itself is biased and has been honed over time in a manner that it cannot in crucial cases facilitate a fair trial. In this context, consider someone who has been falsely accused of blasphemy. This could well be the end of life for him or her here.

What could lift this gloom, this distrust in one’s powers to effect change and, above all, restore one’s confidence in one’s ability to argue without fear of being shouted down by the mob? Maybe a decision from somewhere that rekindles the belief that even the most powerful and most authoritative of them are answerable to court and accountable for their deeds to the people at large?

That is an ambitious, fate-changing turn we are desperately looking for. But do we, by any chance, sense such an occasion approaching the Pakistani people anytime in the near future? Or should we go on clutching at the small incidents of inspiration that we must from time to time find in order to survive?

There is no escape from the negative stories, the most horrifying of which have the zealots baying for the blood of those they consider deserving of extermination. This is a story that cannot be done away with, which cannot even be modified for the better. The truth is that we can only go backwards until and unless we get this unchanged story out of our system.

The good — the most positive — story in the country today would be an end to these kinds of stories which show the state as helpless and defeated by elements which are a law unto themselves. Nothing less will qualify as positive. Nothing else would be positive enough. The most positive story would be that there’s no story.

That appears unlikely because the system has so many little ways of vindicating itself. It knows it must throw up small-town examples in justice and accountability wherever it can to avoid the deluge and provide hope for at least some of the people sometimes.

The system routinely comes up with positive stories to serve to those who still believe in its efficacy and those who have faith in its ability to check and correct itself. Like the story of the two trainee policemen who were handcuffed in Multan earlier this week. They were being punished for holding up a commoner for speeding past midnight at a well-known city square.

There is this reference to how the commoner was not so common a man after all due to his reported link to a senior police officer. The story, which appeared on Jan 18 in Dawn, will still please many for the reason that it seeks to humiliate a brand most closely associated with authority and its misuse.

In the same edition, there is this story of the inebriated DSP in Toba Tek Singh who is said to have a habit of running head on into people who know a thing or two about the power of collective protest. It is said that a few months ago, he created a scene at a bakery when he refused to pay for the stuff that he had asked for. According to the story doing the rounds, the shopkeeper happened to be an office bearer of the traders’ association and it all ended up in a patch-up between the two sides.

Mr DSP, who incidentally was not required by his post in the legal department of the police to be in uniform, was not so lucky after he rammed into three motorcycle riders on a T.T. Singh road on Tuesday last. The people on the spot held him for a while before, to the anger of those around, he was rescued by some colleagues in the police department.

But that turned out to be a brief respite. A protest followed, leading to the arrest of the suspect, and later, to revelations about the laws he had been violating. He was not only accused of being drunk, he was found to have committed the weak-hearts’ favourite crime by breaking the one-way rule.

That’s brilliant stuff by the police. This is as positive as can be in the circumstances. Until there’s nothing worth reporting.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2017

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