It is said there are words which a man will give his life for.
In 1944 Lt Hiroo Onada of the Imperial Japanese Army was introduced into the jungles of the Philippines. He was an intelligence officer. Whereas every other Japanese soldier was oath bound to die fighting rather than surrender, Onada was ordered to keep himself alive. The War ended in 1945, but Onada refused to surrender. His oath, which was his “word” did not allow this. He let it be known that till his commanding officer, to whom he had given his word, personally ordered him to lay down his rifle, he would not do so. It took TWENTY-SEVEN years after Japan had surrendered, to locate Onada’s former commanding officer. He was flown to the Philippines to personally order Onada to surrender. And thus, Onada gave up his weapon and his war came to an end. This is an illustration of the premium a junior Japanese officer put on his given word.
The Japanese were known for putting the greatest value on loyalty, on honor, and on their word. Hara Kiri was how many gained moral reprieve in case they broke a vow, an oath.
In the subcontinent the given word had less value. Most were given to be economical with the truth and plying of falsehood was more common.
A story goes that Sir William Jones, as Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in the mid-1700s, found himself on the horns of a dilemma on this account. He felt that law could hardly be administered where the currency of speech made use of lies with the same or greater ease than it did on truth. So, he asked an official to suggest from his scripture a book on which Hindus could best be administered the oath in court.
He was informed that the corpus of Hindu sacred books was so large that even the few who were literate among them, could not name them all. And that a vast majority of them only had a passing familiarity with the Epics [the Ramayana and the Mahabharata], considered sacred by most. Jones was then studying Sanskrit, * and decided to scour Hindu sacred literature for his purposes himself. And he discovered the Bhagavad Gita, which is a part of the Mahabharata, and “decided” that this ought to be the book on which Hindus should be administered their oath. And so it came to be.
But of course the book did not matter. What mattered was the person taking the oath and what store he set by the sanctity of the spoken and given word. Of course, all of us have always known this. But if this needed any additional proof of pedigree, this was furnished to us by Mian Nawaz Sharif when, as Prime Minister, he solemnly got up in the National Assembly and proceeded to give the money trail of properties he had acquired through theft, and told us a stream of lies. He then repeated these lies on the television. In his support came his two substantial sons, his comely daughter, and his retiring wife. Each one of them spoke lies to four different channels. And the lie of each was different from that of the other four. And this is a family given to spending their last ten days of every Ramazan in prayer at Medina for more than the last twenty years!
The feeling among them, hardened to conviction by repeated tours of Medina, must surely be that if the Almighty was repeatedly giving them a free pass, what business was it of lesser Pakistanis to presume to hold them to account!
And then there is the tale of the latest regime change in Pakistan. The army brought its considerable heft and deployed it in service of the greatest lie yet told in Pakistan i.e that they had nothing to do with toppling the last government. This was like the little kid who has soiled his pants, and stinking badly, keeps swearing to his mother that he had nothing to do with it.
The lies began in the first few days after regime change when the army got full time into laying the groundwork for political engineering, and failing repeatedly, graduated into complete political remodeling. In support of this, lies were needed to be churned out at an industrial scale. And this was duly done, and is being continually repeated.
The man leading the lying machine is both a multiple Haji, and a Hafiz! Judging by the efficacy of his efforts he must be both a poor Haji and an even more ineffective Hafiz whose recall of sacred texts are failing to coincide with his inner purposes.
The lie which “project political remodeling” was to be firmly grouted in, was that Imran Khan had instigated the events of May 9. Just in case anyone in the high command still has the capacity to speak a word of truth to himself and to others, I would like to ask him a very simple question.
Whatever else be said about Imran Khan, can anyone deny that a single call of his has the power of bringing out millions of people onto the streets? None but a fool or a liar can deny this.
So where were these millions on May 9 when one video after another, covering Rawalpindi and Lahore, could only show “crowds” in mere tens, or barely in hundreds? If Imran wanted to put a torch to Pakistan, what kept him from using the greatest resource at his command and to bring out people in their millions? Or is it that he called them and they failed to show up? And if that is the case why is it essential that section 144 is imposed whenever it is feared that Imran may give a call to his supporters to come out? Is it therefore not true that Imran gave no such call to his supporters to come out on May 9, and is this not a lie being peddled by the high command to take its “political remodel” agenda forward–a lie which is as brazen as it is shameless?
The high command urgently need to re-examine a narrative built on lies which they are committed to selling to the 240 million people of Pakistan. They need to know that this is a creaking narrative which is daily showing cracks and will break under the weight of the very lies on the foundation of which it is being built. This is unsustainable. This will take them down, the army down, and the country down. They do not need piety to recognize the unavailing result of a lie they have chosen to uphold and pursue. They merely need enough enlightened selfishness to know the effect of this pursuit on themselves and their families, even if the country and its people be damned.