Praising Robbers

Hai ahl-e-dil kay liyay ab yeh nazm-e-bast-o-kushaad,
Keh sang-o-khist muqayyad hain aur sag azaad.

-Faiz

Traveling through the lanes of time, we are offered many signs and pointers. Because we all have our own unique comprehension patterns, how we each understand these signs and pointers is what makes each of us an individual.

In Hazrat Sheikh Saadi's (RA) story, a poet tries to impress the chief of the robbers by writing a eulogy in the hope of receiving a reward. Upon hearing the poet's lyrics, the chief orders his men to strip the poet of his clothes and kick him out of the cave. The bewildered poet asks the reason for this unexpected reaction.

"This will teach you not to praise a robber!", responds the Chief.

The naked poet is kicked out of the cave into the cold snowy terrain and quickly finds himself being chased by dogs. In desperation he tries to pick up stones to ward off the canines but the stones are frozen in the ground, leaving him to ponder the circumstances of a land where dogs roam free and he is defenseless.

The lines by Faiz mentioned above were inspired by this tale and aptly capture the confounded state of existence of the people of Pakistan today.

The school book tale's relevance is difficult to ignore today. How often we set aside our standards of right and wrong not because we are convinced by a change in their contextual relativity but because we are unwilling to struggle otherwise, unwilling to upset the semblance of order we've established in our own desperate lives.

In October 1999, when a new chapter was opened in the tragic epic of Pakistan, there was hardly a voice criticizing the coup of the dictator. Instead, the act of treason was showered with praise and many an analyst, including myself and our party's leadership, predicted of good days to come. We all wholeheartedly said good riddance to the elected parliament and reared hopes whilst in the lap of a usurper.

In only a matter of months, a vast number of those celebrating the coup found themselves not only vulnerable to attack, but unable to defend themselves or be heard. The robbery of the nation of the past nine years was unprecedented, much of it excused once the lines between speculative profiteering and crime became conveniently blurred. In the absence of an independent judiciary, there was no one and no reason for distinguishing between the two.

Yet even during this period, there was a choir of many an intelligent economist and analyst who could not reject the conjured figures and preferred to proclaim that the economic managers of the dictator were worthy of respect and the fort of the nation was strong, a lack of vision, respect for law or institutional absence notwithstanding. Nor were they moved when thousands of workers of political parties including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf were chased around and thrown in jail if caught for no reason other than their desire for an independent judiciary and justice.

Today, as hunger chases people through the unlit alleys of cities and villages, the grandiloquent speeches declaring the nation being on the verge of an economic miracle ring horrifyingly hollow. The praise of robbers comes to haunt us.

Then we witnessed yet another miracle of an election held under the same dictator in which familiar faces of yesteryears appeared in gowns of saviors and promises of a better tomorrow. We wasted no time in singing praises for them and the revolutionary deeds they would surely engage in to honor the confidence of the people who put them there.

Unfortunately the dawn of a new day has quickly turned dark. Once again we find ourselves left betrayed and defenseless with little recourse for justice. Robbers old and new continue to lay claim to the thrones of power. Sycophants new and old emerge bombarding them with praise. The few fabrics of Pakistani society have been torn apart and half the country has been turned into a no-go area as spirited movements of resistance fortify, some deriving inspiration from injustice dealt to them, and an array of opportunists such as the Taliban terrorists promising swift archaic laws that bury any move toward institution-building that caught fervor on March 9, 2007. In this bewildering state of defenselessness with everyone screaming to be heard, international super powers naturally smell blood and willingly seek to pull and tug to ensure their voice is heard the loudest.

Perhaps we had ignored the lessons Saadi elaborated upon centuries before. Or perhaps the frailty of the human mind in the face of existence nurtures hope in even those who un-repentantly offer more without having delivered anything before.

To be fair, many have learned their lesson. Chief Justice's rejection of Musharaf's dictation being the first example. The collective disgust of the nation on how those sitting in the parliament are handling the judicial issue being another. But will these actions and reactions be sufficient to avoid our praise of future robbers that find their way into the corridors of power? Will these lessons prove to be sufficient when political re-alignment demands the embrace of criminals and crooks?

I don't know if Hazrat Sheikh Saadi (RA) was a fortune teller. Perhaps he had seen in his time, the display of men praising their leaders who in return treated their subjects with scorn and contempt. Whatever the basis of this tale, it gives us plenty to reflect upon and maybe ponder before we engage in the next charade of hope and despair.

Our actions of the past have scorched our land rendering it far away from the gulistan dreamed by our founder. Hazrat Sheikh Saadi’s (RA) stories may not offer a project plan for fixing the broken dreams, but they do reveal some pointers. They are not a revelation. Maybe not even something of an inspiration. They are just some signs there for us to interpret and hopefully not ignore this time.

- Fraz Shafique