METTERNICH was of the opinion that the way to achieve a passable writing style was to compose a draft and then diligently take out all the adjectives from it. Try it: it’s not such unsound advice.
This is not to say adjectives should be banned. If you take out all the adjectives from the Iliad, which has a lot of adjectives, you would probably still have a work of art but not the one we know. But that I suppose was not Metternich’s point. Cut out the nonsense, he probably meant, get rid of the unnecessary baggage and you’ll have a cleaner ship.
If this is true of writing, it is true of government and statecraft, just as it is also true of gardening. Pull out the weeds, cut the tall grass, and sometimes that is all it takes to turn a rank jungle into a garden.
Pakistan’s problem is similar. It requires no revolution but it can do with a lot of pruning and cutting.
Consider the Constitution and all the rubbishy amendments it is loaded with. Out with all amendments: that should be our national slogan. The Constitution as passed unanimously in 1973 had enough Islamic provisions in it. There was no need to add any more. What need to make the Objectives Resolution a part of the Constitution, as General Zia did by decree? In itself no small irony: a military dictator responsible for suppressing the Constitution, setting out to improve the Constitution.
Pakistan can do with fewer statements of principles and objectives. We know our principles. We just don’t know how to implement them.
With Balochistan simmering with discontent — not for the first time, it bears remembering, in its unhappy history — the focus is once again on provincial autonomy. To resolve this problem we don’t need a fresh constitutional charter. We only have to abide by the provisions of the original Constitution.
Give all the provinces the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Let them run their own affairs. And for God’s sake control the itch of putting an Islamabad finger in every provincial pie. If India, a land much more vast, variegated and complicated than ours, has mastered the art of unity in diversity, why does it elude us, a more homogenous people?
Islamabad needs heavy pruning. The federal government has become too big and is into things it has no business doing. The number of ministries and autonomous departments is too large. Personally I am not qualified to say whether there is a need for federal ministries of health, education and agriculture when these are provincial subjects. But this is something to examine if we want the federal government cut to size.
Yes, we need a national curriculum, the same textbooks taught in every school from the mountains to the coast. But before that we need to do away with our multiplicity of education systems. If there is one education system for the rich, another for the poor, and yet another for the religious-minded, forget about harnessing national potential.
Most Pakistanis wouldn’t know that India did away with O and A levels — exams conducted by United Kingdom universities — way back in 1964. Every Indian student sits for the same exam. And there’s one syllabus, one set of books to study. Look at the hodge-podge we have. It’s time we did away with O and A levels which have nothing to do with excellence. How many Dr Salams have our O level schools produced?
When every Pakistani student, boy and girl, studies the same books, is taught in the same language — Urdu, English or a mix of the two — sings the same anthems, goes through a routine of gymnastics to the same music, puts on the same clothes, that’ll be the day to claim we have taken the first step on the road to nation-building.
Islamabad can do with another kind of pruning too. Most of Islamabad’s greenery is false and noxious, depending upon just one plant, the paper mulberry, air-sprayed soon after the city’s founding in order to get quick results. That this plant is allergy-spreading is one thing. It is also very ugly. Reducing the number of ministers and bureaucrats in Islamabad and eradicating the curse of the paper mulberry should signal the dawn of a political and cultural renaissance in a city which since its birth has brought more grief than joy to this country.
What about the plastic shopping bag? With this around, littering our landscape and choking our water channels, can we ever hope to have a clean country?
Islamabad’s countless natural streams flowing from the Margalla Hills to the Pothohar Plateau were once sparkling and clear. They now carry the city’s refuse and litter. Before going for grandiose projects, it might help to straighten out simple things.
When was the last time you visited the Islamabad Zoo? Is that the way to keep monkeys, imprisoned in cement cages? Monkeys in cement cages, big cats in confined spaces and eagles in wire cages not ten feet tall...and we like to think we are a cultured people. Islamabad’s unelected mayor is said to be a great food street expert. He should take time out to look at the zoo.
(Talking of zoos, when was the last time Governor Khalid Maqbool visited the Lahore Zoo, just a stone’s throw from his mansion? Is that the way to keep Bengal tigers, five or six confined to a small room with cemented floors? The Bahawalpur Zoo, although no longer what it must have in the time of the Nawabs, has the best living conditions for lions and tigers anywhere in Pakistan. Something to be said for the old princely states after all.)
General Zia’s Islamization laws were all politically motivated. This is generally known, but hard testimony comes from an unlikely source. Interviewed recently by a TV channel, Chaudry Sardar Muhammad, a former senior policeman, said that in 1979 around the time of Bhutto’s hanging, the Zia regime wanted to break out of its international isolation by cosying up to the Saudis. For this purpose a committee, of which he (Sardar) was a member, proposed passage of the Hadood laws, in the expectation that the Saudis would be pleased. This assertion has yet to be refuted by anyone.
But the barest suggestion that these politically motivated laws dressed up as divine decrees should be scrapped and Pakistan’s clerics are up in arms. If Gen Musharraf had scrapped these laws when he seized power, not a leaf would have stirred. But with 9/11 not having happened, and he not having jumped aboard the American-driven wagon of “enlightened moderation”, his priorities were different and he missed his chance.
Anyhow, knowing as we do Zia’s motives in this affair, the Hudood laws must go. Forget about what these laws do to the status of women. Consider what they do to the status of all Pakistanis. When people are stopped by the police to have their breaths checked for alcohol, or when couples in a park or a taxi are waylaid and asked to show their marriage documents, the licence for this highhandedness comes from a single pernicious source: the Hadood laws. If we want our nation to breathe more freely, these laws, which darken the Pakistani skyline, must be scrapped.
In the developed world you don’t adopt a high tone with a member of the working class. Not because it is against the rules but because anyone doing so risks getting a punch in the face. The poor in Pakistan and in countries like ours are a cowed breed because they get kicked around so much. If we want our people to be proud and to walk tall, then the petty oppression exercised by the lower organs of the state must come to an end. The Hadood laws are a key feature of this system of oppression.
Asked what communism was all about, Lenin said, “Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”
What is Islam? The entire spirit of it is distilled in that saying of Omar, Islam’s greatest caliph: if a dog goes hungry by the banks of the Euphrates, Omar will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment.
Don’t expect the roses to bloom in our garden unless this, rather than the nonsense we’ve foisted on ourselves, becomes our guiding principle.