We stand at a crossroads in our nation’s history; where we have to choose between madness and reason, right and wrong, justice and injustice; for how the mindset of our future generations is shaped, depends greatly on the path we choose for ourselves today.
The killing of Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, has wider implications than what may apparently seem. It blatantly shows us a grotesque, yet very apt picture of who we are, how our sense of justice has waned as a society, and what a hypocritical nation we have become. It also shows how politics done in the name of religion in this country promotes prejudice, violence and intolerance and how it has completely wrecked the mindset of a people who are dictated by insane beliefs about an enlightened religion.
It is the aftermath of his murder that is of greater significance perhaps than the actual murder itself. Taseer was shot dead by one of his own guards for being a vocal critic of the controversial blasphemy laws. The news of his death was greeted with joy by many sections of the society, for many saw him as a ‘gustakh-e rasool’; silence by the majority that seemed to have condoned it, seeing the murder as an inevitable consequence of his views, a price that had to be paid, a fate he deserved to meet.. There was a swarm of politicians on television networks, with hardly anyone fully condemning the act. The media persons took a soft stance, so as not to hurt the ‘sensitivity of the masses’.
It is true that politics in Pakistan is corrupt to the core, with those in power being above the law.While many seemed to have condoned his death for reasons other than his stance on the blasphemy laws, the approval reveals the rusted mindset that is predominant in this country. Our sense of justice as a society needs serious reconsideration, where we think it’s justified to kill in the name of religion, or just because you do not like the politician, you do not condemn his assassination, and you are not allowed to discuss an issue that might be ‘sensitive’ in terms of religion. Thus, basically it is unthinkable to openly criticize a law made by a brutal dictator to manipulate the masses in the name of religion for political gains, because it challenges the belief system, inculcated in the minds of the countrymen through mass propaganda over the decades. And yet killing a person doesn’t challenge the nature of religiosity in the society. There lies a fundamental contradiction here; that it is alright to kill in the name of God, the same God who tells us that killing one person is equivalent to killing the entire humanity.
Beneath this attitude, there lurks a basic savagery; if we believe that it is justified to kill a person in the name of religion, how do we have the audacity to condemn the massacres of Muslims in various parts of the world on religious grounds. How can we condemn the genocide of Muslims in Gujrat by the Hindu extremists? How do we fully support the Palestinians when Israel is also fighting for the ‘holy land’? This is the fundamental hypocrisy that is exposed when we try to separate religious principles from the universal principles of humanity.
Pakistanis are living in times where it’s difficult to speak one’s mind without having to fear repercussions; where speaking the truth has consequences. We are living in a country where one has to think twice before defending the principle of ‘freedom of expression’ for fear of being termed a ‘liberal fascist’; for freedom of expression could mean playing with the “sensitivity of the masses”, and this would give anyone the right to take law into his hands, hold a gun and kill. We condemn a murder with ifs and buts, because people have different religious inclinations here, and by condemning what was blatantly wrong, we might be hurting their sentiments. Freedom of expression comes at a cost here.
It is time we started questioning our dogmatic beliefs that we have continued to follow blindly for decades. It is time we abandoned the cultural and so-called religious inculcation of hatred for one another, and started thinking rationally. It is time we adopted a new discourse and diffused a different form of history for the coming generations, one based on enlightened religious awareness and rational thought. Salman Taseer paid a price for standing up against the draconian laws. History shall judge him as someone who dared to speak for a just cause; someone whose death showed a nation its real face. That much we owe him.
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