KARACHI: Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani said on Sunday the state wanted to produce a brand of citizenry that could not question its authority.

“When you make one [detached] from history, one will also be looking for moorings,” said Mr Rabbani in his keynote speech at the launch of a book — Pakistan: Historical Legacies, Contemporary Issues — authored by Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi.

The programme was organised by the Arts Council in collaboration with the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research and S.M. Sohail Trust.

The Senate chairman urges the state to invite academia to formulate a counter-narrative

The Senate chairman said the state destroyed the ‘coffee culture’ from the country, which only augmented violence and terrorism. “Terrorism can be fought against through literature and poetry, through culture.”

He said the state did not do anything but to crush the opponents, as it defaced the very foundation of Pakistan and rubbed off the truths from textbooks and everything in the control of the state, which was bitter enough for it to swallow.

“We could not find Quaid-i-Azam’s August11 [1947] speech anywhere till not in the near past; and we still could not find his Quetta Staff College speech in which he defined the army’s role.”

He took the audience back in General Ziaul Haq’s regime when the military dictator recklessly rubbed off the word ‘freely’ while including the Objectives Resolution in the Constitution through the infamous Eighth Amendment when it said for the citizens belonging to the minority faiths “to go to their religious abodes...”.

“Such were the tricks that the state had been playing with the country since it came into being 70 years ago,” said Mr Rabbai, was has been opposing the legislation, recently passed by the National Assembly, allowing the extension of the military courts in the country for the next two years.

He said the curricula being taught in the schools of Sindh and Punjab had scrapped the illuminating chapters of the people’s history for democracy “as if they had never been a part of Pakistan’s record”.

He said the state mercilessly threw the country into the fire of intolerance and sectarianism.

Mr Rabbani countered the author’s sanguine view, in which the latter said the state had finally desired to have a counternarrative against the one it had own nurtured in the past, saying, the state was still not there to search for the panacea to treat the ills caused by itself.

“The state is not searching for a counter-narrative against its own decades-long narrative. The state is still not ready to accept that it was at fault when it nurtured a narrative that brought so much mess to the country. It is Pakistan’s academia, intellectuals and students who are vying for a counter narrative,” said the vocal politician, who is famous for showing disagreement with certain policies of his own party, the PPP.

He said the state should have held conferences in which intellectuals and scholars would have been invited to formulate a counter-narrative. “But, unfortunately, the state is still looking towards the madressah, which wouldn’t give it something that we call as counter narrative.”

He said his position vis-a-vis the military courts was crystal clear. “I am against the [establishment of] military courts.”

He said two years back it was not the constitution that stopped him from opposing the military courts, but it was his own ‘timidity’. “Had I not been timid, I would have resigned from the Senate. I did not resign and opted for an escape route.”

About the latest legislation on military courts, he said he had two options — either to skip the Senate proceedings and sign the bill clandestinely or to oppose the bill while sitting in the house. “I deem the second option advisable.”

He admitted that the political parties in Pakistan were plagued with dynastic tendencies, and the 18th Amendment to the Constitution gave their heads huge powers. However, he said political parties could not get fully democratised because of the fact that they had been busy in extinguishing the fires that had been triggered in their way by the establishment from time to time.

Former Balochistan chief minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch expressed his concern over the increasing number of “jihadi madressahs” in Sindh and Balochistan, calling it a ‘dangerous’ trend which would have destructive consequences.

“One can pay a visit to my constituency and look how increasingly such madressahs are being established there. This reflects how the state has resorted to dangerous policies,” he said.

Supreme Court Bar Association President Rashid A Razvi said the same religious parties which vehemently opposed the notion of a secular Pakistan were unrivalled champions of secularism across the border in India.

Terming it duplicity, he added that the country’s authoritarianism began when the Quaid was alive and Dr Khan’s government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [then NWFP] had been dislodged undemocratically.

Author Dr Ahmed said the state finally realised its mistake of nurturing the narrative that dominated the country for seven decades and now was itself in search of a counter-narrative.

Labour rights activist Karamat Ali moderated the proceedings. Writer Zahida Hina, Arts Council President Ahmed Shah, Dr Riaz Shaikh, Mehnaz Rehman and Dr Syed Tariq Sohail also spoke.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2017