By Rifa’at Hamid Ghani
‘Karachi, no one owns this city’, is yet another of the doleful explanatory clichés about the metropolis. Yet Karachi might be better off if it was left alone for a bit – at present it continues to be what it has long been: a battleground for civic and political ownership. Despite the pitiable state it has been reduced to by its varied custodians it remains a prize — demographically and thence politically — and always geo-strategically — as a port.
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
WHEN the PM announced the extension of General Bajwa’s term in August last year the immediate audience response was well it puts an end to speculation as to if, when, who, in that context.
Continue reading Extended extendedBy Rifaat Hamid Ghani
IF one begins by saying the civil politician is as much to blame for military influence in politics as any army general, one can then stop mincing words and — having implicitly ceded that army boots do march upon civil political space — embark on a less coy discussion of this aspect of Pakistan’s democratic march with reference to the pulsating present not just the detonated past. What have the civil and military learnt from abounding exemplified lessons of history and how do they use that knowledge? Bear in mind that the canvas common to both is the space Pakistan’s people inhabit. They should be calling the shots – but not in cross-fire. Which is all that civil politics as played presently by professional politicians seems to be doing: Is there a Cheshire cat grin on military faces?
Justice Munir early on provided the doctrine of necessity as just recourse for dissolving assemblies, legislative or otherwise. General Ayub, the trailblazer of military political interventionism who as C-in-C helped President Iskander Mirza shelve Pakistan’s very first much belated but non-durable constitution of 1956 in 1958, wasn’t much bothered about cosmetic constitutional camouflage. But such is the law of popular political gravity, he came to see wisdom in promulgating a civil presidential system with a customised rule-book. They called it the 1962 Constitution. When parliamentary nostalgia and popular discontent reached a critical mass, Bhutto, founding the PPP, rode the civil storm; but the instrument for a return to regard for the will of the people was an intra-martial agreement. The army, commanded by General Yayha, structured with a legal framework order, voluntarily oversaw a return to civil electoral politicking, with elections duly held as promised in December 1970 which are still undisputedly deemed historically pristine and translucent. They also turned out to be popularly unacceptable and the eastern wing parted from the western wing.
Continue reading Green-black-khaki: the colours of politicsBy Rifaat Hamid Ghani
IT is false to say those were lawyers attacking doctors or doctors under attack on December 11th in Lahore. It was us: people like you and me were doing that to people like you and me in and to our hospital. Something increasingly toxic within and around us is generating an atmosphere of violence. Personal self-respect has degenerated into self-righteous entitlement and intimidatory demand. Can we arrest this slide into the bestial before we all become completely desensitized or submerged?
When and where did it begin? It is chastening to remind ourselves that an angrily contested partition was integral part of the subcontinent’s venture into self-rule. Simply put: this vast subcontinent’s major Muslim minority and heavily Hindu majority did not trust each other enough to share a common space. That was 1947. In 2019 the polity is still wrangling violently within its separate states, failing to resolve a sociopolitical equation of common human interest: We can justly point a finger at the subcontinent’s cannabilistic mother India; emergent Pakistan; Bangladesh; Nepal; Bhutan; and even a not that safely enough offshore Sri Lanka. Why then is the rampage at Lahore’s PIC particularly horrifying?
Continue reading ReflectionBy Rifaat Hamid Ghani
Of course Muslims feel that Islam is one as conveyed by its Holy Prophet (PBUH) in Quranic revelation, and concretized by his exemplary life. But apart from podium oratory, reality demands the qualification that, as apparent in contemporary practice, this singleness emerges in the fact of variously distinct manifold ‘ones’: individual understanding and schools of interpretation are separate and differ.
Continue reading Religious politics