Art of the State

Developments that do not inspire confidence in any one has been occurring with depressing regularity in Pakistan. The world had barely gotten over the shock of the ridiculous cease-fire with Taliban militants in Swat region (which allowed the Taliban to set up sharia-courts there) when the disturbing attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team occurred.

Pakistan has been one country in the news for all the wrong reasons. There is ground to suspect that remnants of the ISI-controlled militia plotted and executed the Mumbai terror attacks on 26th November. Islamic fundamentalism, which many supposed was tightly controlled by the Pakistani State through most parts of the 70s, has now started to bite the hands that fed them.

Pakistan is slipping into a major crisis (as if the current events were not sufficient enough to be termed a crisis). The Lal Masjid incident, the Marriot bombing, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; all indicate towards a society increasingly being torn apart in a bloody battle between competing visions for the future of the country. Most observers thought that the massive people’s movements aimed directly at ousting President Musharaff and reinstating the dismissed judges of the Supreme Court heralded a new dawn in the country ruled by the military for large portions of its existence. Sadly, the once praised democratic government headed by Asif Zardari has trodden the same path followed by his military predecessors. He has refused to reinstate the former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury, and a Supreme Court, with a Chief Justice with close links to Zardari (and Musharaff), had declared Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz ineleigible to stand for elections and hold office. The resulting stand-off and protests, especially the march of lawyers and activists to Islamabad, bears an eerie resemblance to the wave of anti-Musharaff protests that eventually brought about the end of army rule. Lurking in the background of all the current chaos is the ever-present army; one hopes to high heaven that the civilian government is not overthrown and military rule does not come to pass.

Pakistan has witnessed enough history in the last two years to last it a century.

I believe that the situation Pakistan finds itself in has plenty to teach several States around the world. Since I do not have the exact facts with me right now, I make the following  assumption: that elements within the Pakistan administration, with the active consent of their higher authorities, deliberately fostered and encouraged fundamentalist forces in Pakistan and the surrounding areas.  A lot of Pakistan’s current ills can be traced back to the fact that fundamentalist forces object to the direction in which the Pakistani state is drifting.

(I am not bringing in their alliance with America in their crusade against Al-Qaeda; though it must be admitted that this has not helped its case much.)

A State secures the ‘consent’ of its subjects through two mechanisms. One is its coercive might, which is used to ensure that its laws and writs are agreed with. The other is the very idea of the State; greater consent can be secured if the citizens are convinced that the the State fulfils their idea of what a State should be. It might very well be that a State can persuade a tiny yet powerful minority that it does conform to their idea of an ideal State while using its coercive might to ensure that the majority remain in thrall to it.

The problem with encouraging and emboldening religious fundamentalists and assorted chauvinists is that they do not recognize the authority of the State at all, especially one that is forced to integrate itself with the global capitalist order. Religious (and regional) fundamentalists have a very fixed version of what a State must be; and it is a version incompatible with a State that finds itself caught up in the capitalist system and one that is forced to move in tandem with the system. The fundamentalist factions also have the strength and the belief to be able to stand up to the coercive power the State might unleash on them. A modern State which, for whatever reason, has resorted to the encouragement of fundamentalists and/or fascist forces faces this dilemma in a particularly acute way today; it cannot ignore the demands of big capital (both domestic and international), yet it must confront the Frankenstein of fundamentalism it had actively encouraged in the past for whatever reason. This schism would become even more pronounced in a capitalist world reeling under the effects of a global crisis such as we face today, since aggrieved masses hurt by the vagaries of capitalism are more likely to fall under the sway of fascist rhetoric. Nazism, the rise of the Shiv Sena; both grew within a social context of unemployment and economic hardship.

In India, we have witnessed scores of incidents where the State has actively promoted and abetted the activities of fundamentalist fascist forces. The 1984 massacre, the Babri Masjid demolition and the resulting riots, Godhra, Kandhamal, the Ram Sene; we may not be heading down the same path as Pakistan, but we are committing the same mistakes.

Advertisement