Ghosts of revolutions past

The history of mankind at various moments has been a history of dissent. Dissent against oppression, exploitation, violence, tyranny, abuse of power, exacted over a peoples by another. Whether both groups have belonged to the same distinct polity or whether the oppressors have come from without, the history of human dissent has been violent or non-violent, ideological or faith based.

In the dissenting struggle, a prevailing system of oppression has either continued to prevail or has been upset and replaced with a new order. The new order has either delivered the promises embodied in the original dissenting call or, succumbing to the caprices of human behaviour – in turn subservient to the exigencies of human ambition – has transmuted into a newer form of oppression. At the core of all such struggles is the issue of power and how it is to be shared among people. In the concept of the nation state, it is then the power sharing arrangement between the rulers and the ruled that forms the basis of dissent.

Examples abound. M A Jinnah’s Pakistan movement was an ideological dissent founded on the conviction of the existence of two separate and distinct nations, each with a right to secure freedom from British rule independent of the other. Gandhi’s satyagraha, which manifested itself in the non-violent Salt March and later the equally non-violent quit India movement, was an ideological struggle for freedom against British occupation. Martin Luther King Jr’s American civil rights movement was the non-violent struggle for the achievement of racial equality and the end to racial discrimination in the United States. Kemal Ataturk’s war of independence was the violent struggle to overcome an equally violent oppressor, the allied forces, to establish a Turkish republic.

In all these important struggles in the history of mankind, one can see a congruence between the statement of dissent, or the ideals that it embodies, and the practical means undertaken to realise those ideals. The congruence in turn generates synergies of thought and action with an expansive embrace over populations committed to realise those ideals, resulting in success.

There are other examples, where a dissonance between the moral and ideological foundations of the call to dissent and their practical deliverance has led to the establishment of new orders, more despotic and tyrannical than the ones they replaced. The French Revolution is a good example. In 1792, in France, the Committee of Public Safety, over a period of just some 10 months executed more than 50,000 people. This Reign of Terror was the outcome of the French Revolution and through it were pioneered instruments and techniques of mass murder such as the guillotine and summary executions through the sinking of entire barges loaded with men and women and set adrift in the sea.

The dissenting call was freedom from feudal monarchies and corruption of the rich, its lofty ideals aimed at the emancipation of the mass of peasants and surfs suffocating under the reign of King Louis XVI. The manner of delivery, dictated by the personal whims of its sole architect, Maximilien Robespierre, known popularly as ‘the incorruptible’, was violent oppression of anyone deemed an enemy of the Republic. Out of the 50,000 executions noted above, only 8 to 10 percent were aristocrats and notables. More than 50 percent were ironically the very serfs and peasants for whom the rousing call for revolution was issued.

Another example, similar in form to that of the Reign of Terror, but some 130 years later, is the rule of Joseph Stalin in Russia. Again the lofty ideals of state transformation for the benefit of the struggling suffering masses were implemented through practical means diametrically opposed to any such moral high ground. Under the chimera of socialist emancipation came the forced internment of millions of peasants in labour camps under the administration of the Soviet Gulags and later on the Great Purge.

While sources cite different statistics, it is safe to say some 10 million peasants were executed between 1926 and 1934 and more than a million ‘enemies of the soviet state’, members of the Bolshevik Party, the government and the armed forces, during the three years of the Purge from 1936 to 1939. Whereas the Reign of Terror was in large part the perversion of the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Stalin era is a travesty of the philosophical teachings of Karl Marx.

The contemporary equivalent of these two dark periods in history is the reign of terror unleashed by Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda. As that call for faith-based dissent sought to rid the Middle East from the imperial hegemony of the United States and its allies, and their illegitimate creation of puppet states in the modern Middle East to further their personal economic and strategic interests, it captured the imagination of Muslims across the world who saw themselves as unwilling and disenfranchised actors in a global polity increasingly organised to advantage the western world.

The illegitimacy of this dissenting call was, however, exposed in the wake of 9/11 which saw terror being unleashed on a global scale against innocent unsuspecting civilians, and not only those belonging to western nations. Investing primarily in violence to further a distorted ideology and theology, the cancer cells of global terrorism continue to mutate into ever newer forms, dividing Muslims, begetting further violence and ironically legitimising and enhancing western involvement in the Middle East.

The domestic equivalent of the analysis above is offered by the movements for revolution and freedom as embodied in the twin – and now very mobile – dharnas of Messrs Khan and Qadri. The dissenting statements of the dynamic duo have substance, and despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Sharif’s, and the demonstrations of bonhomie on the parliament floor by the flag bearers of democracy, the moral and logical foundations of the twin dharna’s call to dissent, continue to create goose bumps in increasing sections of the Pakistani urban landscape. The manner of delivery, however, is where the problem lies.

I have written before, as have others, of the basic concept of a party with an electoral mandate to govern in a province, attempting to abort the current parliamentary process in the misguided hope of quick fixing electoral, political and social systems to create a corruption free polity, as one smacking of absurdity. If ever there was a script, written by actors in khaki, it seems to have been ill-executed and finally discarded. The rhetoric and action, however, continues to be mired with contradictions and oscillates between the ludicrous calls for civil disobedience, the responsible duties of upholding democracy and a celebration of street vigilantism.

Even as the original script has been discarded, a newer one has swiftly taken its place: the call for the PM to quit has taken the backburner in the evening gigs of both demagogues, as they seek now to attack the legitimacy of the current government vis a vis daily exposés of the government’s performance blunders of the past 15 months. What began as a protest has transmuted into an early election campaign. Minus the optics and the organisation of the roadshow, which continues to improve with each passing day, the whole package is the sum of some very hollow parts, altogether devoid of substance, and described best as being tired, bored and borrowed. That Khan has allied himself with a religious outfit with no political representation, led by a man with dubious political designs and a chequered past, which ties him to the leaders of the current government, is a shame.

While the nervous sensationalism and the simmering sense of an imminent showdown with the government has thankfully subsided, the political unrest created by the twin dharnas has achieved a lower key momentum, which nevertheless continues to upset domestic economics and further undermine Pakistan’s regional and international diplomatic positions. More ominously, there are overtones of a rigid, totalitarian temperament in the manner in which Khan has conducted himself atop his azadi van over the course of the last 40 days. The people of Pakistan can only be cautioned to choose wisely, lest the ghosts of revolutions past return to haunt our benighted history.

The writer is a partner at a professional services firm. Email: kmushir@hotmail.com, Twitter: @kmushir