Who Is Pakistan’s Oedipus?
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
“If we work upon marble, it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow men, we will engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity”. Noah Webster, American Lexicographer.
In Greek mythology, Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jacasta, the king and queen of Thebes. Initially, they had been without any children. Laius consulted the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi about his ever having a child. It was prophesied that in case he got a son, a terrible, unnatural thing would happen. This son of his would one day kill him and marry his own mother. The son, however, was born. In order to avoid the prophesied happening, (his personal safety), he decided to do some more unnatural things. He ordered thrusting a pike through the infant’s feet, and had him pinned on Mt. Cithaeron. As things happen in myths, the infant was rescued by a shepherd and was named due to his handicap as Oedipus.
The shepherd took the child to the childless king of Polybus of Corinth and his wife who raised him as their own son. When Oedipus grew to manhood, he too was warned by the Delphic oracle that he would one day kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus thereafter always avoided Corinth, but one day, he met Laius, (his father), on a narrow road. An argument broke out between him and Laius, his biological father, resulting in the death of the old man. Oedipus then proceeded to Thebes which was being ravaged by a monster, called Sphinx. The Sphinx would always ask the travelers a riddle, which being, “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?” Oedipus answered, “Man”. Having been answered, the Sphinx threw herself into a ditch from a cliff top. Grateful people of Thebes, thus saved from the onslaughts of the monster, Sphinx, chose Oedipus as their king and gave him the recently widowed Queen Jacosta’s hand, (his own mother) in marriage. The people of Thebes believed the late king Laius got killed in his search for finding an answer to the Sphinx’s riddle. The marriage of Oedipus and Jacosta thus fulfilled the rest of the prophecy that one day he would kill his father and marry his own mother.
THE CONSEQUENCES
In those days people often walked with suspended disbeliefs and attributed the visitation of all calamities to the happening of some unnatural events. What happened after Oedipus began bedding his own mother was that a terrible plague broke out in Thebes. It was followed by the epidemic of infertility. From crops to mothers, nothing would procreate. Oedipus in his hubris asserted that he would end the pestilence. In the process, he learned that the old man he once killed was his own father, and the queen in his harem was his own mother. Meanwhile his mother-wife, Jacosta on learning about the identity of her husband, killed herself. Oedipus, picking two pins from her brooch, punctured his own eyes. His own sons later shunned him, and he wandered for many a year as an outcast. Dying, Oedipus promised that his tomb would guard Athens from harm.
Muslims when they used to be God-fearing and God-conscious, in the event of any natural calamity such as a sand-storm, an eclipse or famine, used to seek God’s forgiveness, fearing that some unnatural sin must have taken place in their midst. Now the Ulemas of the country remain nonchalant, unconcerned, and unabashedly unaffected by the absence of social and economic justice; and the moral morbidity so much prevalent all around them. What unites them is just the hatred for the USA, an easy option
Sigmund Freud uses this story and tailors the term, “The Oedipus complex”, in order to explain some neuroses problems in children. He defines it as a male child’s excessive, unconscious love and yearning for the exclusive love of his mother; and a mother’s excessive love for the male children. This desire includes elements of jealousy towards the father and the unconscious wish for his death.
PAKISTAN - A THEBE OF THE YONDER YEARS :
There is nothing shocking in the story when viewed in the Pakistani context. The occurrence of unnatural events is so abundant that nothing seems to be appearing unbelievable. In the fifties, a lone female traveler picked up by a tongawala from Kharianwala in Punjab was taken to a place and raped. The whole country went into a shock, and remained so for many a month. Every body felt guilty as if he had been in connivance with the culprits. The flood of those days was thought of as a direct result of this happening. It may sound so illogical, but it reflected the mindset of a nation that was alive to distinguish the right from the wrong.
Now, small girls get raped in broad daylight by the very custodians of law; child marriages are rampant; people are heard renting their wives in order to feed their children; mothers are found selling their children like onions; helpless and hungry women are getting killed in their effort to get a sack of flour. Pakistan, which once was hailed as Asia’s Cuba, a sugar-producing country is now turned into a sugarless country (logic advanced is international prices), Pakistan, once hailed as a second Mexico, a wheat exporting country is now giving the impression as if it were a drought-stricken, African Somalia.
Democracy is not just holding elections in order to get into power. Democracy becomes a dangerous proposition if it is not accompanied by a mechanism of effective accountability and effective governance. Hell with the kind of democracy that suits only a few rich and that deprives people of their sense of self-respect, honor and sovereignty. After all, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea and Hong Kong have never been democratic countries. Their prosperity justifies its absence.
The politicians, harping on the mantra of democracy; that democracy must take its course; that the government must complete its tenure; that democracy is still in its infancy, just give it a chance to grow, are thriving and prospering, notwithstanding all their corruption, and bad-governance; that frequent military take-overs have never allowed democracy to prosper in Pakistan. All this may be true in theory, but in reality, as our story of Oedipus tells us, somebody has to take the responsibility, take the blame. Did the ruling PPP see anything wrong in its governance? A Fouzia Wahab let loose on the public is not the answer. Did Mian Sahib learn even an iota of lesson from the past? It is the enactment of the 1988 onward drama. Who will have the courage to say that Pakistan is done with Nawabs and Sardars. They better change or be ready for the consequences. How can things change in Pakistan when the politicians make heroes of the villains? The military, after all, did beat the impossible created by the five year Mullah government in Sarhad, and by the impotent ANP government
Pakistan has become worse than perhaps Thebes was during Oedipus’ times. At least, Oedipus did some good things: unnatural things happened without his knowledge. He was just a pawn in the hands of fate. Our politicians are the engineers of their own petards. And they are shamefacedly remorseless. They virtually have turned the people of Pakistan into crawling insects to get killed either way, sometimes in their search for food, and sometimes by just being at the wrong place. Oedipus never pleaded that he was innocent as things had happened without his will and knowledge. Our politicians claim their right to rule because they are widowed; or because they were in jail or were in exile. Did anyone of them ever run pins into his eyes because blunders were made?
Pakistan , deliberately, has been turned into a Thebe of the Greek times. Some terrible, unnatural, immoral things must have taken place in Pakistan, that it is incurring such a Divine Wrath. Daily new Sphinx like monsters are raising their heads, but without an Oedipus to answer their questions. No body like Oedipus ever blinds himself in self-mortification, in remorse. And, who by the way, is Pakistan’s Oedipus? Does Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex carry any semblance or relevance to the ruling PPP party?
The other day, the people in Honduras were heard shouting loud, “Let some foreign power take over this country…” They are yearning for some body from outside to come and relieve them of the agony they are going through. The situation in Pakistan is worse than that.
THE PROPHESY :
One does not have to consult any Oracles of Delphi; nor one needs to study the stars of nativity of the ruling party, or of the opposition to make a prediction as dire as the one I am going to make; it is the natural course of events that is predicting loud and clear that if things do not change in the very near future for the better, a military takeover of Pakistan would be as natural a phenomenon as the rising of the Sun in the East.
It would not be engineered; it would be an inevitability, a sole solution to save Pakistan. After all, the army as an organization, is the most representative of all ethnic groups; it includes in its fold representatives of all the five provinces; its officers emerge from the common people; it is not dynasty based; it is still the only disciplined organization in the country; it has not become as thoroughly corrupt as the rest of the ruling Junta; its high ranking officers, at least, are not as ignorant and illiterate as are the politicians. These are some of virtues which in the next military takeover will get duly extolled.
The politicians need to match their merits with those of the military high-ups. Verbal shooting matches on TV are not an answer. A stockbroker urged Claude Pepper to buy a stock that would triple in value in a year. “At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas”, said famously Claude Pepper, Chairman, House Committee on Aging. Pakistan has no time to lose.
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