Let me begin by admitting that I agree with Imran Khan. Our political establishment, by which I mean our major political parties, are stocked with people who have no respect for rule of law, who treat government office as their own private business and use the police like their own personal armies. These are mostly people who, absent media cameras, would scoff at the suggestion that they are ‘servants’ of the people. This must change. But none of this justifies the politics of that urban, middle to upper middle segment of the PTI’s base that we have come to call Insaafians. The politics of the Insaafians is based on a very simple premise: Pakistan’s problems can all be traced to the fact that corrupt, morally bankrupt politicians govern Pakistan. Their lack of moral character is mostly attributed to their ‘feudal’ and ‘uneducated’ backgrounds. By contrast, Imran Khan is an incorruptible leader with a morally unassailable character. If such a person were to lead Pakistan, they argue, the country would be transformed, politics would be purified of corruption, rule of law would reign supreme, and Pakistan would be on its way to becoming a leader in the world of nations, as it rightly should be. Let’s suspend disbelief for a minute and accept that Imran Khan is in fact as unimpeachable as Insaafians say. The question still remains, how will one man’s moral character lead to the kind of ‘revolution’ that they envision? Obviously, a functioning government requires more than one moral person – or even a few. It requires a whole cadre of ministers and a diverse array of bureaucrats and functionaries. How will the PTI get these individuals to act morally? PTI supporters largely respond in two ways. First, they say Khan would dismiss politicians who do not meet his high moral standards. Second, they say that the great leader will become an example for other politicians and will inspire them to act in accordance with the highest of moral standards. This combination of top-down party discipline and trickle-down morality will purify politics of corruption and vice. The PTI’s rhetoric of ‘revolution’ belies the profoundly conservative nature of this perspective. What we have here is the vision of a top-heavy and centrally controlled administrative apparatus, tasked with moral uplift and reform. This vision of a paternal state ushering the country into modernity is hardly new. It has been the primary justification for army rule in Pakistan since our founding. Whatever the ideological differences between the regimes of Ayub Khan, Ziaul Haq, and Pervez Musharraf, they all converged on the idea that civilian politicians could not be trusted to govern Pakistan because they lacked the appropriate moral character, especially discipline and honour, and that our progress depended on standing above the corruption of civilian politics. Similarly, PTI supporters insist that our politicians are incorrigible and politics itself must be transcended. When PTI leaders claim that they have inspired a whole generation of middle to upper class youth to participate in the political process – people who otherwise saw politics as a filthy vocation – they mask the fact that what they have actually inspired is a kind of anti-politics, which treats all political dealing and bargaining as a sign of corruption and immorality. When one begins with such an absolutist and purist vision of what politics ought to be, the solution can only be a centralised and authoritarian state. PTI supporters dream of a state governed by ‘educated’ urban professionals – a technocracy – who, unlike ‘feudals’, are not only more efficient but also more morally upright. These technocrats, untainted by politics, will faithfully serve the people and usher in a ‘naya’ Pakistan. This discourse about the moral vice of our politicians elides the real problem of governance in Pakistan, which is not that our politicians lack moral character (why should they be less moral than politicians elsewhere?) but that the majority of Pakistanis lack the capacity to hold them accountable. This lack of accountability springs from the vast inequalities of wealth and power that structure the relationship between Pakistan’s elites (business, landed, and military) and the rest of the population, including both the middle and upper-middle class. Insofar as the PTI’s leadership draws from the same pool of privileged and powerful people (and it does!), there is no reason to believe the party will be any more accountable than any other party. The passion that drives PTI supporters is certainly real. The problems that the PTI identifies in the political establishment are real enough, too. But the party’s vision of a moral state, purified of politics and politicians, is not the solution. Certainly, one can argue that the PTI will govern better than the PML-N or PPP, but this is a far more humble claim than ‘revolution’. It need not come with the sanctimony we have come to expect from Insaafians. But, there is still promise here. If the Insaafians can channel their passion into the difficult work of organising people and building up local institutions and, more specifically, organising cross-class alliances (lower to middle class) that stand as a challenge to elite power and privilege, then we might still find ourselves on the road to accountability and a more substantive democracy. For this to happen, however, Insaafians must abandon the framework in which the problem of politics in Pakistan is reducible to the corrupt moral character of our politicians and instead focus on the structures of power and inequality that allow elites to evade accountability. This would also mean putting to rest the dream of the great saviour, but maybe this is like asking for a naya PTI. The writer is an anthropologist whose work focuses on Islamic movements in Pakistan. Twitter: @akkhan81
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 04:48:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015