When sanity is banished from discourse

We are living through times when a foreboding often casts its shadow that whatever we were taught through our evolving years, whatever we learnt through a lifetime of passion, labour, and hard work, and whatever we believed in as the bedrock of our life is all slipping away, leaving us staring into an immeasurable blank signifying nothing.

This excruciating intrusion penetrates our being as one is struck by the futility of it all which is amply reflected in having wasted our precious years in accumulating mountains of monstrous hubris signifying no real substance or value.

This is not just about my life. This is also not about your life alone. This is about the life of every person who is living through these turbulent times when constitution, law and morality have been vandalised mercilessly and, in their place, the edifice of the country is raised on wobbly pillars of personal diktat practised through state brutality and vandalism.

What were the compulsions which have forced us to enter this dead-end lane that does not have a passage into a world administered by dispensing justice and rule of law and where human dignity and honour are assets still worth some value?

What we have witnessed in the last few months narrates a story of planned decimation of the constitution and all the laws that flow from it. Starting with piecing together a conspiracy that commenced early during the tenure of Imran Khan as prime minister, lasting through months of persistent efforts to destabilize the government and ending with the passage of the vote of no confidence, it was all like a clinical plan for seeing the back of a leader who had earned deep trust of people by prioritizing their welfare even through the dreaded times of Covid-19.

The drama did not end with his ouster alone. As one were to see in the months following his exit, there was much more in stock which needed to be implemented. With almost a couple of hundred fake, flimsy, and fraudulent cases registered against him, supplemented with a barrage of sickening character assassination attempts, Imran Khan and his family were subjected to remorseless pounding laced with venom and invective.

To target his political power base and cast slurs on his character, his party members were subjected to harassment with some disappearing only to resurface and read statements regarding changing their political loyalties and walking away with a slate cleansed of all crimes which they were accused of through the days of their association with the PTI.

This appeared to be straight out of a Shakespearian tragedy with bodies piling on the stage owing to the twin scourge of treachery and barbarity. Is it that, for the rest of our lives, we shall continue to collect and dispose of these bodies so that the stories of crime associated with them are not broadcast in public?

In a demonstration of piling humiliation upon pain, the stage is being decorated to induct back in power a gang of established criminals with their grievous misdemeanours having been washed away in a flurry of a junior court activity which hurriedly nullified the punishment awarded to them by the apex court of the country.

With the moral base for such an adjudication having been rendered an utterly dispensable commodity, I am still struggling to find the law that would provide legal justification for the unprecedented and speedy reprieve which has been granted to a former prime minister to prepare him for bearing the mantle of power. One is reminded of that ultimate symbol in human tragedy, King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport”.

It is quite a journey we have traversed in the last 18 months. It had a beginning, though extremely belittling, but the accompanying regressive and degenerative ingredients have been cast in an endless trajectory of malevolent movement. What one is witnessing is an infatuation with dispensing ‘quick justice’ to Imran Khan to confine him behind bars for an indefinite period of time and make use of his absence from the scene to change the direction of politics so as to accept perpetration of crime and corruption as cardinal instruments for administering the country. Will this be possible, or will this exercise boomerang to inflict further damage upon whatever remains of the national polity and character?

And what kind of mindset is commandeering this stratagem which has pushed the country to the brink? Worse still, every setback along the way in implementing this strategy has only elicited more of the same venom and invective. It has not instilled in the power wielders a desire to re-evaluate their plans and see if they are at all worth following in critical matters concerning the fate of the state and its people. Such thoughts would come to mind only if the purpose is anywhere close to ensuring the welfare of the country.

But if the objective is to further perpetuate the instruments of tyranny and oppression as means of governing, such thoughts would forever remain alien. This appears to be a more tangible projection of the existent circumstances as is evidenced by the feeling of desperation which is gradually filtering into shaping a mindset that may bring down the entire edifice of the state.

The people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have shown their unrestrained anger at the conduct of the rulers by coming out in large numbers in support of Khan. With the PTI planning to expand their political activities, the situation in the rest of the country may soon change drastically.

No one has ever been able to control the cycle of time. There are things which take a while in shaping, but the rule of the people is a reality which cannot be restrained from dawning. Faiz narrates it with his distinctive measure of revolutionary zeal:

"We shall see the day that is ordained,

The day that is inscribed on the tablet of eternity,

When the monstrous mountains of oppression and tyranny

Shall be blown away into shreds.

And beneath the feet of the enslaved,

The earth shall rattle.

And those in power,

Shall tremble by the roar of thunder."

The recipe being currently practised is only adding to the disease. But there appear to be no takers yet of the treatment which needs to be administered. In fact, every setback sees further perpetuation of anger as is evidenced by the ruling on military courts. This is symptomatic of a state where sanity has been banished from discourse.

This is not the recipe for cure. There is a dire need to banish hate and let reason and rationality shape the fate of the state.

The writer is the information secretary of the PTI, and a fellow at King’s College London. He tweets/posts @RaoofHasan