Our fractured foundations

In Shinar, Noah’s sons and daughters build a great, mighty city. Beautiful plazas and grand manses fill the city. Armies subdue the world beyond its walls and caravans bring back treasures beyond counting. But peace and beauty and wealth are not enough. More than anything, Noah’s descendants wish to slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God.

Ten thousand hands join as one, and in their care a Tower is constructed. Higher and higher it climbs till the sky and the earth are as one to its occupants. But their hubris offends God. In His wrath, He brings low the Tower, scatters the people across the face of the Earth, and shatters their language into shards of a greater whole. That ruin comes to be known as Babel.

This is how the Book of Genesis explains why humanity speaks different tongues. It is also a fitting account as to what plagues Pakistan.

If there is one thing that can be gleaned from the state of politics today, it is that we no longer speak the same language. We are not connected by the same past, we do not confront the same present, and we cannot envision the same future: we do not share the same reality anymore.

A majority sees this government as illegitimate; the other side disputes the existence of the majority itself. One side thinks Khan’s absence from power is the single greatest threat to the country; the other thinks he’s the threat himself. Dissent is crushed as if it were an insurgency, while dissenters believe they’re standing against treason of the gravest sort.

This binary situation is unsustainable. But what is worse is the cancer throbbing at the heart of these disputes: our conception of truth has been marinating in the brine of politics too long.

Part of the problem is that we revert to thinking of democracy as an end unto itself. It is not. It is a means to self-govern, to safeguard human dignity, to achieve equality, to advance justice, to promote social welfare, to protect rights, to drive progress, to discover truth, and to hold the powerful accountable.

When we see it as an end, we see our right to dispute and disagree as the objective itself. We resist being told that our dissent may not only be unproductive, but harm us in the long run. We furnish false accounts and peddle disinformation because we think it smooths the way to a better future.

On the other end of the spectrum, we see our society’s flaws and believe them to be flaws inherent to democracy. When democracy is invariably not enough to yield progress by itself, we become disillusioned and embrace the fist over the tongue. We stamp down on dissent because we think it will tear us apart. We attack those who oppose us because we are blind to the defects in our thinking.

A jaded lawyer once told this author that in trying to resolve disputes between two parties, “one must first identify the last point of convergence in their belief systems and work from there.”

The problem here is that there is no identifiable point of convergence left between Khan and the powers-that-be. The deeper the two sides dig into their respective trenches, the more irreconcilable their versions of truth become. Words like ‘justice’, ‘treason’, and ‘stability’ have been stripped of shared meaning and repurposed for tribal warfare.

The result now is a society whose two halves can only speak past each other. We are, in a very real sense, living in the ruins of Babel.

But this need not be the story of Pakistan heaving its last, laborious breaths. We have the ability to undo the damage that has been dealt to the national psyche. And it starts, as it so often does, with a question. The two sides must ask themselves: will victory over the other yield their desired end-state?

The only sane answer to that is a resounding no.

Both sides have fundamentally misaligned their efforts with their respective win scenarios. Khan needed to gain freedom of action by leveraging narrative control. The Other needed to gain narrative control by leveraging its control of state institutions. Contrary to that, Khan’s efforts resulted in great narrative dominance with ever-decreasing freedom of action while The Other’s approach expanded its control of state institutions at the expense of narrative control.

In simpler words, their strategies won them the things they already had in sufficient quantity, all the while moving them further away from their true objectives.

Second, both sides have framed the conflict in ways that render the post-conflict world undesirable to themselves. Consider.

The PTI’s organisational structure may end up being dismantled, but that victory will not hold. Myths become stronger in suppression, and dissent will always rear its head and snap its jaws at the hand that seeks to control it. If you force it down today, it will show up tomorrow. If not under a green and red banner, then under a black one. And if not that, then under no banner at all, but from everywhere, all at once. A never-ending, self-perpetuating cycle of chaos and forceful suppression, each birthing the other till there is no way out.

The PTI’s ‘victory’ is equally illusory. Suppose the party gains control of the state, dismantles its adversaries, and claims the mantle of power. Then what? In the winter of ’98, Nawaz Sharif believed himself king of all he beheld. That momentary triumph bred resentment, which festered till Sharif’s turn in the spotlight was brutally curtailed.

More dangerous to the polity at large is the prospect of the politicisation of state institutions. If institutional high command fractures along partisan lines, the institution’s ability to perform its most fundamental duties will disintegrate.

Consider the advice being tendered to the PTI. One side suggests that the situation will be resolved when there is a ‘return to the barracks’. The other meekly suggests that the PTI should learn to organise itself more effectively. The problem with the former is retreat is not an option. The PTI, meanwhile, cannot ‘organise better’ in any appreciable manner while its freedom of action remains so thoroughly curtailed.

If both sides were rational, they would conclude that the continuation of conflict is worthless, for winning in this narrow context is the same as losing in a broader sense. The act of engaging in collaboration, then, is not the same as putting faith in idealism; it is trusting in the cold, undeniable logic of game theory.

If Babel fell because its builders forgot their limits, Pakistan risks ruin because its architects refuse to see theirs. There are no victors in a zero-sum game, only mutual losers picking through the rubble.

The writer is a student of law at King’s College London. He can be reached at: salar.rashid@kcl.ac.uk