THE best in any country is the fire and enthusiasm of its people. The best in Pakistan has never been the property of its mandarins, political bosses and men in uniform. It has been the preserve of those who, despite the odds, have held aloft the torch of freedom.

Pakistan was not always the graveyard that it now increasingly resembles. Even in the most stifling dictatorships intrepid and often romantic souls were to be found who believed in democracy and were convinced that if only elections were held the country's problems would disappear. The unsoundness of this belief should not detract from the honesty or idealism with which it was held.

Fazlul Haq and Suhrawardy - by today's depressing standards these two figures from the gloom of the past appear almost like political titans. Later in East Pakistani there appeared Maulana Bhashani, the closest thing to a political firebrand we had in those days.

The country's tragedy of course was that the poverty of the political element in West Pakistan ensured that even in Jinnah's first cabinet (a point often ignored) the equilibrium was already shifting towards the representatives of the mandarin class: Ghulam Muhammad and Chaudri Muhammad Ali. Behind them in the shadows stood the sinister figures of Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan, both destined to leave their baleful imprints on the country's history.

Unless they turn to books (a fashion on the wane in Pakistan) youngsters of today have no way of knowing the all-embracing nature of Ayub Khan's dictatorship. The old political leadership epitomized by such figures as Daultana, Khuhro, Gurmani, Qayyum Khan, Suhrawardy et al, (admittedly not all angels) was consigned to oblivion. A new political structure was raised based upon the system of basic democracies. Far from being autonomous, this system was completely under the heels of the bureaucracy, then more powerful than at any other time in the nation's history.

Nowadays much is made of the economic successes of the Ayub regime, mostly by economists whose expertise in their own discipline is often not matched by their understanding of politics. Economic development may have taken place in the Ayub era but the totalitarianism which was the hallmark of that regime left the country impoverished in spirit.And yet, despite the oppressive nature of the Ayub regime, the cause of freedom was kept alive by a political class (so different from today's) which had almost a childish belief in the merits and efficacy of democracy. It was kept alive also by a cadre of political mavericks like Agha Shorish Kashmiri (than whom a greater orator I have never heard) and the quintessential rebel poet, Habib Jalib. Once at the YMCA Hall in Lahore (this was in 1966) I heard Agha Shorish speak. If not the hall at least my heart was set on fire. As for Jalib, his moment in the sun was the presidential election of 1964 in which Miss Fatima Jinnah was persuaded by a cabal of opposition politicians, including Mian Mumtaz Daultana, to enter the lists against Ayub Khan.

The fervour to be seen in Miss Jinnah's public meetings was exceptional. There were other speakers too but the star performer was undoubtedly Jalib who would sway the crowds with his fiery poetry. He also looked the part of the revolutionary: blazing eyes and hair swept back to a full mane. Pakistan was a slower place then with little of the rush and noise which pass for progress these days. But in its soul there stirred a richer mixture of romance and idealism.

But poetry and dictatorship resulted in a strange schizophrenia. At the top was the suffocation and stagnation produced by an autocratic regime, at bottom the restlessness of the disfranchized masses trying to give voice to their frustration and despair. We know what became of this turmoil: in the eastern wing the triumph of Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, in West Pakistan the success of another stormy petrel, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

By that time power had shifted to another military saviour, General Yahya Khan. It could not have been a poorer or a more fateful choice. Incapable of understanding the complexity of events in which he was soon caught, Yahya presided over the greatest disaster in the nation's history: defeat at Indian hands and the loss of East Pakistan.

But we seem to have a gift for reliving the past. Thirty years have gone by since the tempestuous events of 1971 and yet we are no closer to learning anything from experience. Lost once more on the desert sands and looking to the stars for hope and salvation, the nation's caravan is being led by another group of military enthusiasts who, even as they retrace their steps in the dark are vowing to create a brave new world.

Before I proceed further with my tale, here is a piece of racism I want to share. Pakistan's best, brightest and toughest can show a hard face to the world but before foreign (white) journalists they somehow tend to let their defences down and say things that in more guarded moments they perhaps would not.

Now whether this had anything to do with General Musharraf's expansive comments to Christina Lamb of the Sunday Telegraph I cannot say but connoisseurs of the unusual or the rare will have noted that it was in this interview that the General said two things: setting the country on the right path could take anything from five to 20 years and power in any case would not be returned to the likes of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Voices timidly protesting that no time-frame was being given for the return of democracy should now be silenced. No time-frame could be clearer than this. Nor the contempt that comes through for the political class as a whole.

But with or without Ms Lamb, the contempt for the political class seems to be one of the central tenets of General Musharraf's philosophy. Consider in this context what the attorney-general and law minister, Aziz Munshi, told the Nawai Waqt: Pakistan's politicians had now become a forgotten part of the country's history and they would only be remembered for their loot and plunder.

With this analysis I have no quarrel at all except that plunderers in Pakistan have come in different garbs and to blame politicians alone is not only unfair but historically incorrect. Munshi has blamed politicians from the year 1988 implying thereby that in the Zia-ul-Haq era which came before that cutoff point everything bore a roseate hue. This is a travesty of history. Besides setting the country back many years, Zia wasted long-term opportunities for short-term goals. Indeed, the seeds of most of the country's current problems were sown during his rule.

But who in the prevailing climate will listen to such reservations? The new philosophy we are being indoctrinated with proclaims that politicians are all scoundrels while men in uniform are knights in shining armour.

That politicians have sinned and are corrupt admits of no doubt. But others have sinned with them and drunk equally at the trough of corruption. The imposing bungalows of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi - edifices which mock the poverty of the Pakistani masses - are a testimony to that. They do not belong to politicians alone. In much the same way, no single section of the population or the ruling elites can claim sole proprietorship over wisdom and infallibility. The very notion is foolish.

A little humility, instead of the growing arrogance on display, would be more useful. We need to start from the premise that Pakistan's failure is the failure of its governing class which includes, in equal measure, politicians, bureaucrats and men in uniform. Only when we accept this can we proceed further and agree that giving Pakistan a sense of direction and putting it on the right path has to be a national and not just a military endeavour if it is to have any hope of lasting success.

The military is a part of the nation but not the nation itself - a distinction that would be considered elementary in normal times but one worth holding on to at a time when all sorts of new professors are working overtime to extend the frontiers of political theory.