Victory at Mochi Gate

When Sheikhul Islam, Professor, Dr, Syed Tahirul Qadri descended on Islamabad on January 14, 2013 with his horde of revolutionaries, he promised to turn Constitution Avenue into another Tahrir Square.

Fifteen months down the road, we know how lucky we are that Constitution Avenue is not Tahrir Squire and Pakistan in not Egypt; Sheikhul Islam must also be thanking his stars that he is not Mohamed Morsi. This column touches on the fazail (positive points) of Mochi Gate compared to the Tahrir Square, Mochi Gate being the symbol of Pakistan’s slow, painful and long struggle for democratic rights and Tahrir Square being the symbol of the Arab spring model of revolutionary and abrupt change. I argues that we need to take our own model forward rather than trying to bring tectonic shifts in a hurry.

The spectacles of a caged former Egyptian president facing a kangaroo court makes a marked contrast with images of a hospitalised, self-imprisoned former dictator in Pakistan invoking all tricks he can muster to find his way to exile. Whether he is forced to face prolonged misery at home or allowed to flee and thus ridiculed, the ultimate weapon of social control, the myth of dictatorship as we knew it lays shattered. The seamless story weaved by master narrators like Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada and carved on stone tablets of the Mutalea-e-Pakistan textbooks has lost all coherence. In the Pakistani version of the Shahnama, Rustam is not Rustam any longer and it will not be easy for a Firdausi to make him a Rustam once again.

Here I am using the term myth in an anthropological sense – a true or imagined to be true story that provides a template, much like the path carved by flowing water, for events to repeat themselves. It is not just Musharraf’s ouster that has broken the mould. Musharraf is the third dictator forced out by events and the people of Pakistan, the fourth one flew directly to heaven mocking all human efforts to unseat him.

Our legend was a tragic one, usurper interred on hallowed ground on the sound of the military bugles while princes going to gallows or exile. Defying all Aristotelian norms of tragedy, the story this time has taken a happier or even a comic turn. The slain prince stands resurrected, looking much younger with the help of hair transplant technology and the usurper is on the run, lending an element of comedy of errors to the theatre of the republic. We must thank Nawaz for this feat, whether it was through his own leadership skills, with a helping hand from the Saudis, or just Allah kay fazl-o-karam se.

Myths don’t break easily, with every repeated episode the water gets deeper and deeper till a gorge is carved out leaving no space for events to take a different course. Maire hamwatno becomes the only way to address the masses and nazria-e-zaroorat the only ideology. We can argue that the myth lays broken like the statue of Saddam Hussain because it was never believed to be true in the first place.

The people of Pakistan challenged the official narrative at every pause in the tale. At every street corner there was some Faiz, Jalib or Shorish singing a defiant song or an Ustad Daman humming an insulting tune. At every second pulpit, there was a Bacha Khan, GM Syed, Nasrullah Khan, Maulana Bhashani or Ataullah Mengal with their blasphemous texts.

The monochrome of Nazria-e-Pakistan and the official version of Islam notwithstanding, Pakistan was imagined in the colours of a kaleidoscope by its people and their myriad leaders. C R Aslam, a leading communist leader in Punjab, recalls: “After the Partition, Muslim Leaguers would not allow anyone else to hold a rally or a demonstration. The Jamaat-e-Islami’s Maulana Maudoodi was also very annoyed with this situation. He said to me, ‘Think of something.’ I spoke to Ferozuddin Mansoor and then the first demonstration was held in 1948 in Mochi Gate.” This rally was a joint Jamaat and Communist Party of Pakistan rally. On the stage, Feorzuddin Mansoor (communist leader) and Maulana Maudoodi sat together.

This spirit of accommodation and diversity is the hallmark of the Mochi Gate model. Before the presidential election of 1964, both the contestants – General Ayub Khan and Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah – chose the Mochi Gate garden as the venue to launch their election campaigns. It was Mochi Gate from where revolutionary poet Habib Jalib mesmerised his audience with his poem – Bees gharanay hain abaad our karoroan hain nashaad, Sadar Ayub Zindabaad. Ms Jinnah addressed his other poem Aisay dastoor ko subah-i-banyoor ko mein naheen jaanta mein naheem maanta electrified the people.

This makes our story so remarkably different from the Arabian Nights, though both our American friends and their bearded enemies insist that we belong to the Middle East. For decades, Arabs preferred tyranny to anarchy. ‘Better 60 years of tyranny than one day of anarchy’ was a popular maxim. On the other hand, Pakistan witnessed its first rights movement within four years of its formation when East Pakistan erupted on February 21, 1951 against attempts to make Urdu the national language and lack of representation for Bengalis in central administration. By 1956, Bengalis had earned a great victory by winning official status for the Bengali language.

One reason for the world marvelling at the Arab spring is its dramatic plot. A series of eruptions occurred in a number of Arab countries after a young Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in 2011 after his cart was confiscated and an impulsive policewoman slapped him across the face.

There is no dearth of such dramatic events in our history, though most such events occurred long before the media revolution. For example, 45 years earlier, the sound of a gunshot sent ripples across the country when a first year student, Jodat Kamran, was killed in Multan on January 10, 1966 in protest against the Tashkent agreement. These protest led to removal of the first military dictator, Ayub Khan.

The people of Pakistan have fought a relentless battle for their rights. They have faced all kinds of pain and suffering, ridicule and humiliation to cover whatever expanse they have covered. In such circumstances forgiveness does not come easy. For years, I felt humiliated on many weekends when I took my children to what was the only modern cinema in the twin cities, located in an entertainment complex built on the site where the first elected prime minister of Pakistan was hanged.

No wonder, the vengeful ghost inside many of us bays for the blood of the dictator we now have hold of. But civilisation is all about taming these demons. And speaking of legends, there is no sacrilege worse than muddling the tale of Karbala and turning the usurper into a martyr.

Why not let Musharraf run away, in the dead of the night, the way he shifted from his hospital bed to the luxury of his bedroom at his Shehzad Town farmhouse after recovering miraculously without any substantial treatment? While he enjoys his remaining life in exile, we can inflict a permanent ritual punishment on his statue at Mochi Gate. Let that be the deal.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com