Tilting at windmills

Altaf Hussain is the only problem Pakistan seems to have. He is so powerful that his words can raise a thousand warplanes from across the world to bring down the towers of Islamabad — or Rawalpindi, to be exact. When he asks the West for help against the Pakistan Army, the European and American troops come rushing into Pakistan to rescue his party workers; when he beseeches New Delhi to come to the aid of his beleaguered Muhajir supporters in Karachi, Indian tanks scurry forward hurriedly to the Pakistani border; when he talks on the phone to his lieutenants in Karachi, his speech is so rousing that his followers immediately take up arms for a country of their own. He is the biggest traitor we have, the biggest thug among us whom we must bring down in order to save the state from his venomous vitriol, the most dangerous peril we must rid of so that our society is saved from his evil influences.

And we have deployed the most selfless do-gooders to lodge as many cases against him as they possibly can in as many parts of the country as there exist; we have advised police officials to not even so much as ask as to why a case must be lodged in Gilgit-Baltistan for a speech that was, in reality, made in London and heard only in Karachi and possibly Hyderabad. Police stations have been told to not inquire into how and why all the hundreds of complainants against Hussain have experienced personal injury over his words. To back it all up, judges have been instructed to haul Hussain into courtrooms for his verbal excesses; legislators, ministers and media persons have been lined up to condemn his treacherous, traitorous, rebellious utterances. Soon, it is hoped, this menace of a man will be taken care of and we shall live in utter peace and harmony thereafter.

If only that were true. Hussain is prone to historionics and he and his party have a lot to answer over violence in Karachi. His antics can easily be seen as desperate attempts to save his party from wilting under pressure over its well known nexus with organised crime. But making a speech that raises questions about the military’s history should, by no stretch of imagination, be construed to constitute an invitation for an uprising. Numerous writers, poets, intellectuals and activists have done just that in the past, mostly as acts of well justified defiance in the face of a power-hungry military regime. Seeking international help against real or perceived persecution should, by no national or international law, be seen as an act of aggression against the state. Many others, from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir Bhutto and from Nawaz Sharif to Pervez Musharraf (a former military man at that), have secretly or openly sought international intervention when faced with difficult circumstances at home.

And when did getting together to listen to a speech – or to organise the listening of one – become crimes liable to be tried in antiterrorism courts? What happened to the constitutional guarantees of freedom to assembly and freedom of speech? What about all those hundreds of thousands of speeches laced with sectarian hatred, made day in and day out, sometimes even leading to deadly outbreaks of violence? Have police stations in Punjab registered cases against those who organise religious hate speech in Sindh or Balochistan?

The cases against Hussain for making certain remarks and against his supporters for listening to those remarks mark the rise of a new type of blasphemy trials. Anything said or written that can be perceived to have insulted the honour of the armed forces is sacrilege and, therefore, must be treated as such — with cases registered and court hearings conducted. And, just like under the blasphemy laws, the institution being allegedly maligned is not itself lodging those cases — anyone can do that, claiming that his or her feelings having been hurt.

If convicted, what punishment should Hussain and his followers get? Death? For nothing assuages the wrath raised by a blasphemer better than taking him, and his followers, out. And what if the police and the courts fail to prosecute them the way they should be prosecuted? Will they then be lynched by enraged mobs the same way people have been put to death over the blasphemy of religion?

The military and its image consultants should pause and think about the consequences. A party, and its leader, who in the past has done the military’s bidding several times may no longer be required for shoring up support for the next military dictatorship, as they did for both Ziaul Haq and Musharraf. But they should not be pushed to the dustbin of history by making the military a holy cow, punishing everyone who is even remotely perceived to be refusing to pay obeisance to it. The illegal, unconstitutional and ill-advised ways to put down Hussain and his Muttahida Qaumi Movement will create more complications, and possibly more violence, than they intend to address.

This was originally published in Herald's August 2015 issue. To read more, subscribe to Herald's print edition.