There appears to be a growing peeve among our generals with the people of Pakistan. They can’t understand why, when they greeted all previous military takeovers with applause, when it came the turn of the present lot to rule, these very people have turned nasty. They therefore believe that the people are being unfair to them. So, they are resorting to beating them into line by a mixture of increasingly harsh measures or by changing narratives meant to scare or mollify them, or to disabuse them of the virtues of Imran Khan.
The one thing the generals are stubbornly refusing to do is to get to the heart of the truth. They are refusing to see that this change among the people has occurred either because the generals have changed, or the thinking of the people is no longer the same.
Actually, it is a bit of both.
The lay millions are not given to analysis. In the deep recesses of their subconscious, they KNOW what is of benefit to them, and what is inimical. They know by instinct that there is an inverse relationship between corruption and justice so that more of the one means less of the other. For a good seventy years, they believed that the army would rid the country of corruption which would usher in an era of justice, which every society has craved, and which all religions, belief systems, and ideologies are rooted in or have promised.
The people were not aware of the moral erosion within the top army ranks till Bajwa overthrew Imran Khan, and supplanted him with the Zardari-Sharif combo. This is what enlightened the populace about the extent to which their once beloved army had fallen, sold out its soul for lucre, and dredged everything of value, from our value system.
This is the thinking that our high command is now seeking to “correct” by using the stick and by telling stories. Judging by the rumours that the DG ISPR is now to be reinforced by three Major Generals under his command, one may guess that there are a lot more stories waiting to be told, and many more lies to be spread. Talk of digging deeper in order to get out of a hole!
But the question remains why, for so many years, did the people of Pakistan look to the army to improve governance in the first place? The answer is that all people are driven to seek the betterment of their lot. They will pin their hopes on any entity which, in their assessment, best promises this change. Our people did not know democracy, nor had much faith in those who claimed to represent it. Jinnah was revered in the urban public mind, but more for bringing “freedom” than for the gift of democracy. By the time of his early departure, the people had tasted both the first fruits of a hazy freedom and those of a squabbling democracy. What they experienced, they did not like.
The departure of the British which gave freedom to the people came amid a great upheaval. The breakdowns which followed in its wake had to be repaired by local administration, which was not fully up to the task. A comparison in the subconscious mind of people, between the performance of the new officialdom with that of the outgoing British, was therefore inevitable. What was immediately perceptible to them was a rise in corruption, a fall in functioning efficiency, as well as in the dispensation of justice. A nostalgia therefore for the “Angrez ki Hakumat”, and a hankering for justice, was the inescapable result.
Whatever our ankle-deep nationalism may have to say about the British colonizers, their administration was defined by an intolerance of theft. And further, if one did not commit an offence against the crown, a fair dispensation of justice was always the expectation. When I joined the army, we still had a number of JCOs who were veterans of World War 2, and the curious among us never tired of asking them about how things were under the British. What they extolled about their departed masters the most was their sense of justice and fair play. Even in the village, the oldsters never tired of recalling how well things ran when the “gora sahib” was at the helm.
The people of Pakistan merely saw the army as a better alternative than being governed by the politicians. They had more faith in the army and thus prayed for military takeovers, and applauded them unabashedly when these occurred. This went on till the army proved to the people beyond any doubt that all their hopes had been hopelessly misplaced when they handed Pakistan over to the Zardaris and the Sharifs. What defilement of hope!
But the question still remains why, among all the institutions, it was the army which fired the public imagination with expectations.
Just as tribes lived by codes, written or unwritten, so did all the professions. In the old days, it was the guilds which defined these codes for most of the trades and professions. Even thieves had codes of conduct. These codes gave them an identity and a collective personality, and to society overall, they gave stability so that each section or individual knew what the other was supposed to do. Expectations were therefore defined. This is where stability came from.
The army had many advantages over the other institutions. The latter had to deal with the public. This made them comparatively more prone to corruption. The army, being insular, had no such dealings. No one therefore ever heard of an army officer or JCO etc extorting money from the common man. And this common man therefore ended up believing that a person in the army was proof against going corrupt. Because the army actually defended the common man during wars, which were not infrequent not too long ago, the army, therefore, occupied in his historical memory a place which denoted dependability. And a body which was worth being depended upon in times of great stress and strife was worthy, in common thinking, of being honoured. Thus, honour came to be associated with the army. And lastly, the army was large and efficiently functional enough to be viewed as a practical and desirable alternate governing body when compared with all the other existing structures. Finally, the army made for direct contact between the British and the Indians at the highest terms of equality in the greatest numbers. This was the requirement of the profession. Without treating the Indian with respect, no loyalty would be garnered by the British Officer. And without loyalty, there could be no army. This allowed more of the British to rub off on the army than on most other professions.
The high command knew well that corruption reaches a point where it becomes a prime national security imperative. Thus, corruption was cited as the main reason for each of their takeovers of government. But NEVER did the generals move against corruption. They let it fester and grow, and eventually surrendered openly to its blandishments themselves, in the process. After their last direct ingress into the corridors of power, they handed the country over to a hand-picked gaggle of proven thieves and pimps and lost their own cover in the process.
They subverted their oath, lost their code of honour, and ruined their credibility. This is now being sought to be repaired by the ever-liberal use of the stick and the telling of new stories. The high command is peeved because its subjects are refusing to bend to the one, nor are they being amused by the other. The generals, being used to “discipline”, can only view this reaction of the people as bloody-minded recalcitrance. They are therefore resorting to the only tool in their kit bag with which to correct this behaviour-the stick. And as they are failing, they are steadily expanding the use of this tool and wondering why it is not working. It has not occurred to them that perhaps the tool they have chosen is not appropriate, and all they need to do is to turn about and march back to the barracks.
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