The flame of revenge lit by impotent rage and helplessness can become the hottest of fires. The greater the oppression, the more the helplessness, and the greater the hatred engendered. Many seeds of burning vengeance get to be implanted in this set of circumstances.
Some of us experience something akin to this phenomenon in poorly administered boarding schools, which throw up school bullies with some regularity. All the lesser toughs who could have stood up to this bully, join with him instead, and together they spread terror, while the rest of the school prays for deliverance. And when the unlikely hero shows up and takes down the bully, an exultation erupts with uncommon gloating and all the oppressed of yesterday gang up to punch, kick, bite, or at the very least spit in the faces of the gang members just divested of power.
One would have thought that such an eruption of seething thirst to get their own back should be most natural against feudal power, but surprisingly that is not the case. The unbroken spirit which breaks the shackles and has it in him to stand against the feudal lord, is coopted by him to further suppress the already oppressed. He becomes a part of the palace police, as it were.
But standing up against unjust landowners is common in rural areas where holdings are not too large and thus feudal power not quite so complete. In such areas, primarily of northern Punjab and KPK, the act of vengeance is quite common, and so too the tradition of vendettas born of this.
Campbellpur [now Attock] was well known for its tradition of blood feuds and vendettas. Those of us tried by the “Attock” Court Martial and sentenced to jail terms, were transported to District Jail Campbellpur on March 2, 1974.
A jail is its own world with its rules, culture, and hierarchies. This microcosm offers a free course in sociology to those who may be interested.
Very soon it became known to us that generally the jail population was divided among those who were there for murder or attempted murder, and those accused or convicted of “ignoble” crimes like theft, fraud, or picking pockets etc. And those under trial for murder felt belittled if locked up with lesser men, the pimps and pickpockets etc.
A quite substantial number among the murderers were links in long-running blood feuds. I asked quite a few of them if they’d rather not see murder eliminated from society, but found that most disagreed with this possibility. Generally, their view was that in an unjust society where the police and courts had no commitment to deliver justice, the fear of murder was what brought a certain order and equilibrium to the community.
In the closed world of a jail, there is hardly a secret, and everyone knows who among the inmates was guilty and who was unjustly charged or convicted.
The most looked down upon among the murderers were those who had committed a “qatal e na haq”, a murder unjustly committed; while those deserving of respect were the ones who had “punched above their weight” and brought down one more powerful than themselves.
Mamrez Khan fell in the latter category. When I went to see him in the death row I was expecting to see a strapping youth of some presence, but the sight which greeted me was that of a pale, skinny, withdrawn young man who must have been no more than sixteen. My attempts to speak to him barely drew a faint “yes” or a “no” from him. No further conversation.
Thereafter, I kept visiting him once every few days. Often I left him some eatables, but this did not draw him out.
Then one day, very hesitatingly, he asked me if I could request the Jail Superintendent to disallow the visits of his mother and sister when they came to see him. He explained that they were very poor and could hardly afford two bare meals a day, and must be borrowing the fare to travel. They did not have the means to pay this back, and this bothered him greatly.
After this, he began to open out to me and told me his story, which I recount to the best of my recollection: “My father died of TB when I was very little and my sister was about seven. My mother slaved to feed us. We are not ‘kammis’, but have a little patch of land which is not productive, so labour was the only way out for us. As my sister grew up, I noticed that she was becoming the focus of the unwelcome attentions of the lumbardar of our village. I did not know what to do. My other relatives were equally poor and could not bring up the courage to confront the Vadera. I went to the brothers of the Vadera and laid my ‘pugree’ at their feet. I wanted them to intercede for me so that my family honour was spared. I could not draw even sympathy from them. Just jeers.
“A mixture of helplessness, shame, and anger became my constant companions. These defined me. With the passage of time, my mind became a total slave to the thought of killing the Vadera. So I never stepped out of the house without my axe. Then one late afternoon I saw the Vadera get off the bus and take the path leading to the village. Alone. I placed myself where he could not see me, and I prayed to God that my first blow would not miss. And it did not. The Vadera lay stunned and on the ground with a portion of his head sliced off. That part of his head which he still had on him, I hacked off. Then I cut off his genitals and stuffed them into his mouth, and tore off his clothes, reducing him to utter nakedness. This done, I ran to the police station and gave myself up.”
The Mamrez who told me this story was a far cry from the one I had seen so many times earlier. He seemed infused with a sense of accomplishment which had taken over from the listlessness to which I’d grown accustomed. As I got up, I said I hoped his death sentence would be commuted and that eventually when he went back to his family, a life of peace awaited him. No sooner had I said this than he gripped my wrist with uncommon strength. With fire in his eyes, he said: “Saab jee there will no peace. Inshallah, I will go and kill the Vadera’s three sons and especially his two brothers who jeered at me when I went to them begging for their help and intercession!”
When naked injustice shamelessly prowls the land and unbridled power is freely used to insult and injure people, the people will react. This reaction may be delayed, but it has to come as the rage builds up. At the level of a family, such rage throws up a Mamrez Khan. But when society is put under the grind, a Sardar Udham Singh shows up. And eventually, a nameless murderous mass flings itself upon its oppressors and upon society at large.
For two years now, after the High Command rudely usurped power, it has subjected the deprived people of Pakistan to a reign of terror. The most common and the kindest weapon of this reign has been random humiliation because humiliation leaves no mark on the skin, but leaves a searing hatred under it. Humiliation of women folk and terrorization of kids as a matter of policy has been a hallmark of this dispensation. Counterbalancing this humiliation is the loathing its victims feel for the perpetrators. The latter know it but pretend not to feel it.
There burns in the people a rage against the establishment which has no precedent, and a level of raw unprocessed hatred, which was once thought not possible.
Elections was the only way out for this rage to dissipate itself, but these were rigged in a manner so blatant that they became the crowning insult that a despised establishment threw as a sop to a wounded people. And to raise the power of this insult still higher, and further deepen its lacerations, they imposed pimps and thugs like the Zardaris and the Sharifs to rule over them once more. And they are certain that the people will not react!
But there appears to be a fear that an odd person just might. So there is a belief that their Chief is shy of visiting his troops without first disarming them. If true, this must constitute a great advance in the tradition of leading men from behind.
But if the High Command has allowed even a grain of good sense to survive in heads where little except arrogance resides, they should know that a strangulated population always retaliates, and though this may be late in coming, it always does. This is the way God has designed man.
P.S. As I sit down to edit this article before posting it, I cannot help thinking about Asim Munir, Qazi Faez Isa, Sikander Sultan Raja, and about treachery. Which cells, I ask myself, would these three have occupied had they been in jail with me? I cannot imagine that pimps and pick-pockets, which were well-defined and regulated professions under rules of their own shadowy worlds of the time, would have accepted them.
It is the bane of our times that so many “unacceptables” should have broken out of the professions for which they were made, and spilled out into the rest of society to putrefy it.
Email: saeedakhtarmalik85@gmail.com