Pakistan scene
The year 2007 will be remembered as a year of extremism. It was in this year that 'the extremists became very extreme'. It was in this year that the extremists on the mountains of Waziristan killed and captured more soldiers than at any other time in the history of Pakistan. It was in 2007 that we became the only country in the world that suspended and 'house-arrested' its own chief justice twice in the same calendar year. It was in this year that a militant legislation transferred all state powers to a single individual perhaps the only person in the world who has a nuclear button in his pocket and whose constitutional amendments cannot be challenged.
But there was also a new sense of energy and resistance in the air that began to give hope to the dark despondency of 2007. It was for the first time that Pakistanis, forgetting their many differences, closed ranks and began to take positions around a single dividing line. The line that separates the civil and the uncivil society. A divide along the lines of conscience on the one hand and compromise on the other.
What are the dynamics of this new development? While the traumatic events of 2007 may have been a triggering factor, this new wave reflects an accumulated disillusionment of people from 60 years of uninterrupted deceit, corruption and lawlessness. Gradually, but firmly, people have come to perceive their leaders (both civil and military) as corrupt, self-serving and power-hungry whose only interest is to use the placebo of clichés, deceptive manifestos and hollow slogans to dupe the masses.
The educated middle class lawyers, teachers, students, doctors, professionals, individual citizens and groups which has traditionally kept itself at a distance from mainstream politics is awakening to a realisation that it has stayed on the sidelines for too long.
One does not, however, become a part of the civil society by merely suffering in silence. Even a weekend vigil or periodic public protests are not good enough. A society is called civil when its members individually and collectively follow ethical principles and practices in their working lives.
They relate their work to larger social and political causes. They support ethical and principled stands. They protest peacefully and lawfully against tyranny and injustice.
They are willing to contribute their time, effort, money or expertise for a cause or community. They are willing to rise above their party positions and cushy jobs, to raise their voice when the rulers indulge in unethical practices, and finally they care and work for the betterment of a larger society, instead of a privileged few. While it may still be many miles to the land of the civil society, there are clear signs and symptoms that people in Pakistan are already taking the most difficult first steps. May 2008 be the year of the civil society.
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