Mob, Marches and Society

Polit­i­cal activism and demo­c­ra­t­ic cul­ture are two main com­po­nents for a democ­ra­cy to flour­ish but there is a thin line between being polit­i­cal­ly active and being a part of a mob. In my opin­ion, the lead­er­ship and its agen­da plays an impor­tant role in trans­form­ing a polit­i­cal­ly active pub­lic into a mob. There is no doubt that the polit­i­cal mum­bo jum­bo in Islam­abad is endan­ger­ing the fledg­ling democ­ra­cy and demo­c­ra­t­ic norms. This whole tur­moil is also depict­ing two harsh real­i­ties.

First­ly, a larg­er pic­ture of the Pak­istani soci­ety as exhib­it­ed in the ongo­ing polit­i­cal tur­moil is very grim. Large num­ber of peo­ple gath­er­ing and respond­ing proac­tive­ly to the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al calls of their pied-pip­ing lead­ers proves that the main prob­lem lies at the core of the soci­ety. It stands clear that the politi­cians, despite their belief in democ­ra­cy, have failed to estab­lish demo­c­ra­t­ic norms in the soci­ety, edu­cate com­mon Pak­istani of his demo­c­ra­t­ic duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties, and ensure demo­c­ra­t­ic rights for each and every indi­vid­ual.

Major­i­ty of the main­stream polit­i­cal par­ties are right­ful­ly con­demn­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing Imran Khan and Tahir­ul Qadri but, they should also real­ize that the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the soci­ety is their duty. Amer­i­can civ­il rights leader, Tim­o­thy Thomas For­tune, once famous­ly said, “Mob law is the most forcible expres­sion of an abnor­mal pub­lic opin­ion; it shows that soci­ety is rot­ten to the core”. This quote per­fect­ly befits our soci­ety. Once this tur­moil gets dif­fused, our politi­cians should turn to the prob­lems that lie at the core of our soci­ety; democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the soci­ety is much need­ed.

Sec­ond­ly, it is show­ing how imma­ture, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and unprin­ci­pled Imran Khan’s pol­i­tick­ing is; as he has amassed his sup­port­ers and sym­pa­thiz­ers for an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al act. His band­wag­on appeal and polit­i­cal oppor­tunism has fur­ther defamed the Aza­di March. His tac­tics to top­ple down the gov­ern­ment give rise to a press­ing ques­tion i.e. what sort of ‘true democ­ra­cy’ he wants to estab­lish through his unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means?

More­over, in a gen­uine rev­o­lu­tion, class dif­fer­ence between the lead­er­ship and par­ty work­ers dimin­ish­es but in Khan’s rev­o­lu­tion, it does exist and it is obvi­ous by the fact that the entire lead­er­ship resort to their lav­ish retreats in their shiny SUV motor­cades leav­ing sup­port­ers strand­ed on the road. How can a lead­er­ship that has failed to elim­i­nate class dif­fer­ence with­in its own par­ty promise the wel­fare of mid­dle and low­er class­es of our coun­try?

Let us for the sake of argu­ment agree that Imran Khan sin­cere­ly wants true democ­ra­cy in Pak­istan in which true rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the mass­es will be part of nation­al assem­bly, but what about an extra-con­sti­tu­tion­al prece­dent he is deter­mined to set by top­pling a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed gov­ern­ment? Even if he suc­cess­ful­ly man­ages to over­throw Nawaz Sharif’s regime, he will sure­ly face the same threat to his own gov­ern­ment in the future as well because his pow­er play is not only imper­il­ing his own polit­i­cal career but, also stig­ma­tiz­ing Pak­istan and the domes­tic pol­i­tics.