A REVOLUTIONARY order, one which upsets everything and leads to the emergence of something entirely new, is its own justification. For its legitimacy it needs no sanction from any Supreme Court. Lenin went before no chief justice after the Bolshevik Revolution. Nor did Mustafa Kemal or, nearer to our own time, the Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian revolution.

The English-speaking coup, on the other hand, which because of our collective sins is the phenomenon whose fourth incarnation we are currently seeing in Pakistan, is the very antithesis of a revolutionary order. The reason for this is simple. Not only in Pakistan but in all ex-British colonies, the English-speaking coup flows from an institution which is one of the pillars of conservatism and tradition.

Let us not forget that the most enduring legacies of our colonial experience are: the English language, the trappings of democracy, the notion (if no more) of the rule of law, and armies structured on the English pattern complete with mess ceremonial, swagger sticks and batmen. Small wonder then if, as far as tradition is concerned, there is more in common between the Pakistan and Indian armies than, say, the armies of Pakistan and Iran.

Being therefore a mainstay of the status quo, and indeed one of its principal beneficiaries, the army can no more shatter or even upset the status quo than a college of cardinals can be expected to move against the Holy See. This is not to say that the officer corps is not concerned about the country or is not upset when politicians make a mess of things. Army officers, especially when they are young, in their innocence and enthusiasm get very upset indeed. But to remedy this situation they do not rush to the collected works of Ho Chi Minh or Che Guevara. Their instinct is to bring to the complexities of the political situation the certainties of the parade ground. And since on the parade ground everything slovenly or wrong can be set right usually by shouting the appropriate orders, the temptation is to think that in politics too there is nothing that cannot be set right with a bit of discipline and military rigour.

Every military government in Pakistan has suffered from this approach and General Pervez Musharraf's government is no exception. The latter has made an example of a few people - the defaulters put in prison - which is exactly what Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan did in their time. Ayub threw the country's leading politicians out of the political arena and launched a noisy drive against smugglers and black-marketeers. Yahya threw hundreds of civil servants out of their jobs. In both cases after the dust had settled it was business as usual. General Musharraf is from the same army and heir to the same tradition. It takes a leap of faith to suppose that the current accountability drive - now sputtering, now coming alive in fitful spasms - can pose a serious threat to the standing and privileges of the country's elite classes. At the risk of sounding faintly ridiculous, this is not, nor can ever be, a Khomeinite revolution.

General Musharraf and his colleagues, therefore, should tailor their rhetoric to the limitations of where they come from. Since they are not French or Bolshevik revolutionaries and since smashing the status quo is neither on their agenda nor indeed in their vision of things, it follows that the utmost they can hope for is (1) to undertake the necessary surgery to lance out the more conspicuous pimples and carbuncles which spoil the face of Pakistan and (2) to help create an enabling environment for the restoration of democracy. If General Musharraf succeeds in bringing about just this and no more he will have earned a place for himself in Pakistan's history. If, however, through a combination of bad advice and megalomania (both qualities of autocratic rule) he goes beyond these basic aims and starts thinking of himself as a de Gaulle or an Ataturk he will be repeating the mistakes of his predecessors.

In the aftermath of October 12 it is a strange sight to see perfectly sane people go into hysterics the moment democracy is mentioned. "You want to return to Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif?" they heatedly ask. In their indignation they tend to ignore the fact that our country was the product of a political process spearheaded by a strong-willed and clear-headed man called Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Pakistan was not the result of a military conquest; the army, or for that matter the bureaucracy, had nothing to do with its making.

For better or worse therefore keeping the political process alive is a matter of necessity for us even if from time to time inept and corrupt figures blight the political landscape. Consider this analogy. On the battle-field the record of the Pakistan army, which has had its shares of defeats and disasters, has not been uniformly glorious. Should this mean we call for disbanding the army? In the same manner even if an entire generation of politicians is guilty of crooked behaviour it should not mean we pack up the entire baggage of democracy.

Of course ordinary people in their frustration look to quick-gun solutions. They expect an end to poverty, injustice and unemployment and think that hanging a few people from the nearest lamp-post will do the trick and push Pakistan into the light. All this is over-simplistic melodrama. But at the moment it is not very popular to try to see things against the backdrop of our history.

Whenever we have had military rule what has happened is that after a few spectacular moves like the current arrests of defaulters routine and inertia take over. While the army command, with the help of the bureaucracy, exercises political power, the economy is left to be managed by 'technocrats' usually with strong links to the financial powerhouses in Washington. Shaukat Aziz is not the first of this kind. From Muhammad Shoaib in Ayub Khan's time there have been others before him. The day-to-day running of the administration is left to the bureaucracy without any interaction from public representatives.

In the beginning this arrangement looks geared to the conduct of efficient business. Very soon, however, the bureaucracy becomes more and more aloof from the people. The regime as a whole becomes inward-looking with all thought of reform sacrificed at the altar of political survival. This was the pattern in the past and it looks likely to be repeated in the absence of institutional reform - reform of the courts, the criminal justice system and the police. The army is not fully qualified to understand the necessity of this reform. The bureaucracy has an interest in blocking it. We will therefore be left with gimmicks such as the so-called monitoring mechanism set up by the present regime. All it is doing is to salve the army's conscience without having the slightest effect on the running or efficiency of the general administration.

It is not a little odd therefore to hear General Musharraf repeat his mantra at every conceivable opportunity about sham and real democracy. Since the logic of power cannot be denied, the army as the country's most powerful institution will continue to exercise direct or indirect political influence for the foreseeable future. So for army commanders to want to look periodically like statesmen and reformers should not be surprising. All the same, the officer corps should not forget that the army's basic task is soldiering, a difficult enough business in any case, while government is best left to the people's chosen representatives even if the currency of public representation looks soiled for the moment.

If distortions arise in the political process, as they have arisen in Pakistan from the Zia era till today, the army should help correct them and then, its short task completed, it should go back to the barracks. When instead of this it assumes the mantle of messiahdom (as it stands in danger of doing at present) and starts liking the feel of the new fit, its own professionalism is affected and the national polity is further distorted. We cannot afford to see this pattern repeated.