SO perhaps it is fitting that, on our 70th anniversary, we are captive to a made-for-TV reality show in which all the antagonists claim to be upholding the sovereignty of Pakistan. While roadside vendors selling flags and TV producers selling nationalist hymns are trying to get us all into azadi mode, a (disqualified) elected prime minister from Punjab is having it out with a Punjabi-dominated state apparatus about who rules the roost.

Iss parcham key saaey tale, hum eik hain?

Despite their very public spat, all claimants for power will answer that rhetorical question with a resounding yes. Come the 14th, army chief, prime minister and president will issue predictable statements about the sacrifices we have made to be free, the inviolability of the Pakistani ‘nation’ and the need to be wary of never-ending foreign conspiracies.

The patriotism of the ruling class will never be questioned.

On the same day, Nawaz Sharif and his entourage will probably still be waxing lyrical about the verdict of the ‘people’s court’ on GT Road overturning that of the other one in Islamabad.

In short, the ‘we’ that has sustained the myth of Pakistan as ‘free’ and ‘united’ for seven decades is as divided as it has ever been. We are currently witness to the spectacle of this country’s heartland of power— Punjab — in a (figurative) war with itself: even parliament echoes with speeches about whether Nawaz Sharif — the benefactor of that most brutal general of the lot, Ziaul Haq — is responsible for his own fate.

Of course, nothing like the ‘revolution’ that Nawaz Sharif promised on day one of the ‘homecoming’ is under way, but this contradiction is unlikely to just blow over. And yet, a large number of Pakistanis looking on at the whole shebang are hardly moved, in part because whatever the outcome of the ruthless manoeuvrings taking place at the highest echelons of power, little will change for the mass of people struggling to negotiate state and market in everyday Pakistan.

A more significant reason for the relative disinterest in the supposedly epic battle being waged by the Sharif brigade in front of the ‘people’s court’ is that much more epic (and deadly) battles have been waged by thousands, if not millions, of people in this country over the past 70 years but without anything like the recognition that Nawaz Sharif’s ‘struggle’ is garnering.

Take, for instance, Nazir Abbasi, who was killed in a Ziaul Haq torture cell exactly 37 years ago. Aside from committed leftists and nationalists, who has commemorated Abbasi’s sacrifices? In fact, are communists like Abbasi not generally depicted as ‘traitors’ in the political and intellectual mainstream, despite the fact that their struggles have arguably contributed more to Pakistan’s agonising process of democratisation than any Sharif ever will?

In recent days, a number of Sindhi progressives have been disappeared by you-know-who, as if to remind political dissidents outside the Punjabi heartland what azadi really means. If Mr Sharif really wanted a ‘revolution’, he would have spoken out about this most dastardly tactic of ‘undemocratic forces’, would he not?

The truth is that, internal struggles for power notwithstanding, the patriotism of the ruling class will never be questioned, whereas those who struggle for genuine freedom — of expression and assembly, from hunger and deprivation, for the rights of all ethnic nations, genders and classes — are always tarnished with accusations of at best not being patriotic enough, and at worst conspiring against the state.

To be a patriot is to be attached to the land and its people, both of which have been around long before the formal state that we know as Pakistan was conceived. To demand that this (relatively new) state uphold the rights and dignity of all the people that have occupied this land through time immemorial does not require justification, let alone defence against charges of sedition.

On this 70th anniversary, it is those who have always denied basic freedoms to the people of this land that should be called to account, as they skirmish shamelessly for power in the very name of the people they claim to be defending.

Mian Sahib, the real patriots of this land will continue to fight against dictatorship, and even for the rights of an elected prime minister despite the fact that you have only ever been committed to a highly truncated version of democracy. It is true that on many fronts the ‘establishment’ calls the shots, and that an elected government challenging this monopoly is a sign of progress. But on others the PML-N government has demonstrated that it shares the outlook and methods of the same establishment that it seeks to challenge. Perhaps you are willing to acknowledge these shortcomings, stop chiming in with the ‘greater national interest’ and start a genuine revolution from within.

I, patriot, will not be waiting around — my fight for freedom continues, no matter what.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2017