An Abraham Lincoln in Pakistan
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
“When I am gone, I hope it can be said of me that I plucked a thistle and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow” - Abraham Lincoln
The title is odd, but its relevance is not. The saying in America is that when you are in trouble, take out a five dollar bill and look at it, and ask the same question which even the most powerful president of America, Teddy Roosevelt, would often ask, “What would Lincoln do if he were in my shoes?”
But why Abraham Lincoln in particular, and what he has got to do with Pakistan? The answer is simple. The nation of Pakistan long ago stopped taking the Quaid as its role-model; its mentor, or, as would say, Whitehead, its “ Habitual Vision of Greatness”. He has been conveniently sidelined, and is practically deemed as redundant. Ironically, he is being put to a queer use by the corrupt and shoddy people. His image on a hundred rupee bill is openly used for extracting illegal gratifications. It will cost you, “five Quaid-i-Azams or five Babas”.
The Quaid’s motto of “Discipline, Unity and Faith”, has also become totally outdated, and is deemed by most as out-of-tune in Pakistan. Hardly any politician of worth ever talks about him. The air permeates, resonates and reverberates with the silvery phrases coined by the Bhuttos, and now used by the Zardaris. Besides, who in Pakistan can afford leading the kind of bland, and colorless, disciplined and honest life that the Quaid lived; certainly not our brand of politicians there. His early death, like that of Gandhi in India, was a blessing in disguise for him. This saved him from many a humiliation on time.
There is another cogent reason also for selecting Abraham Lincoln as the most relevant person to deal with the Pakistan problems. Pakistan is passing through a phase of its life when its resources seem to be becoming the very cause of internal friction and of it factoring. Politicians in the first six decades of its life succeeded in allotting to themselves on perpetual basis the provincial and national seats which are hard now to be re-possessed. These seats like property Deeds stand defined and declared in their names. Elections are held just as a recycling process for the purpose of attaining a flair of legitimacy. What the politicians, however, ever lacked and keenly yearned for was their full sway over the country’s resources. The new demand for the creation of various provinces is, in fact, that move towards monopolizing those resources. Abraham Lincoln, as we will see in this article, inherited a similar situation in the 1860’s when he became the president of the United States of America.
Substitute the Sardars of Baluchistan; the Vaderas of Sindh; the Maliks, Tiwanas, Ranas and Chaudhris of the Punjab; and the Khans of Khyber Pushtunwa with the slave-owners of the southern states; with the factory tycoons of the northern states, and you will find ample relevance of Abraham Lincoln in Pakistan. The question is: why did he so passionately believe in Unionism? The answer lies in his life-story. I have chosen him solely for this purpose. It was Unionism that made it possible for him to rise from being a minus zero person to a super hero; from a poor rail-splitter; from a cock-fight-referee; from a flatboat-man; from a grocery storekeeper; from a village post-master; from a surveyor; from an illiterate person; from a lawyer; from a state politician; to a commander-in-chief; to a president. And all on his own!
Often in Europe, and even so concurrently in Pakistan, people live a fixated life. Their chances of mobility are limited. They remain fixed in the station they are born in. Not so in America, and perhaps also not so in Europe. Ms. Saeeda Warsi, a Muslim woman became the chairperson of a conservative party in England for the first time in 2010. America let this happen in 1860. The saying that “all men are created equal” became true through Abraham Lincoln in America. Islam said the same thing more than fourteen hundred years back. The Mullahs keep repeating it in Friday Khutbas every week, but has it ever been put into practice, exceptions being the Prophet’s times?
The prime minister of Pakistan is seen campaigning for a candidate, Mr. Jamshed Satti, who had made an open confession in the Supreme Court of the country that his degree in Islamic Studies was fake. Since he has the backing of his cronies and the people of his caste, therefore, he is deemed both honorable as well as indispensable. The PM as well as this illiterate liar, both are found challenging the SC in the public campaign meetings that the SC has no authority to judge the validity of this man’s educational competence. According to Mr. Kanwar Dilshad, the former secretary of the election commission, there are about 148 MPAs and MNAs who are feared of holding fake degrees! The PM is so ignorant about the law which reads, “A person shall not be qualified to be elected or chosen as a member of parliament or an assembly unless he/she is sagacious, righteous, non-profligate, honest… there (should be) no declaration to the contrary by a court of law”, states Section 99(1) of the Representation of the People’s Act 1976. And Jamshed Satti and his type if elected would be, under the 18 th Amendment, legible to sit on the team assigned to select the Judges of the Supreme Court, or would be making the laws of the country. Could there be a bigger joke than this one? The country leadership had never been so utterly devoid of moral character as it is now. In order to own the country’s resources; and in order to undo each other politically, they are poised to factor the country into provinces in the name of better governance. And in this game nothing is unfair - no amount of dishonesty; no amount of unfairness. Loyalty to the leadership is the criterion.
The PM shared a “new truth”, on May 13, 2010, when he said while campaigning about Satti that “the condition of possessing a BA degree as a pre-requisite for a member of the National Assembly is found nowhere in any civilized country”. In such a stinking atmosphere, the story of a totally self-made person like Abraham Lincoln who kept his country united; who set it on the path of perennial progress; who made people forget their malice and vindictiveness; and who established the golden rule that all those who have merit and ability for self-improvement, stand a fair chance of rising to any heights where sky is the limit. Such a story is relevant as it merits sharing with the readers.
The leaders in Pakistan non-stop berate the past legacies they inherit with a view to finding an excuse to cover up their own dismal failures. Abraham Lincoln’s fundamental technique was, “Don’t condemn; don’t criticize or complain… because criticisms of others are like home trained pigeons - they always return home… rebukes invariably end in futility”. He saved America from factoring during the civil war that he inherited, solely by dint of his personal integrity, honesty, intensity of purpose; his compassion; his communicative skills; his rocky decisiveness; consistency; patience, and above all, his ability to undertake the hardest decisions. He insisted on rushing provisions to Fort Sumter in 1861 when more than half of his cabinet differed and even when it meant direct provocation of the South to plunge into war. But he went ahead.
Leaders shine only when circumstances are most hostile and unfavorable. Endlessly draping oneself in a mourning pall is not a sign of strength, but is a clear mark of human weakness . The current leadership in Pakistan, interestingly, believes that it can thrive politically on the martyrdom of its former leaders. It was Abraham Lincoln who once perhaps famously said about such leaders: “He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when the sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was orphan”. Their stinking incompetence has been pungent enough to have killed them politically long ago. Abraham Lincoln was right when he said, “What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself”.
No leader in human history can claim to have been worse off than Abraham Lincoln was. His ‘manliest traits - his universality - his canny, easy ways and words upon the surface - his inflexible determination and courage at heart’, all became manifest at a time when America was passing through its worst period of civil war as would say his contemporary literary giant, Walt Whitman. He didn’t berate the past presidents; nor did he accuse the foreign powers such as England or France for stoking the ambers of trouble in the South, and encouraging the secessionists in the civil war, by promising them an early recognition. He went on to hold the bull, not by its tail, but by its horns, and ended the secession that had almost split the United States of America into two countries.
The Federalists had chosen their own President, Jefferson Dave; had declared Richmond as their new capital; had created their own army and had chosen General Lee as their Commander in Chief; had already declared six of their southern states as independent; had almost blocked the passage of the new elect President Mr. Abraham Lincoln to Washington; had even planned to kidnap him when he was to be on his way to Washington. As says the Time, “the new President assumed power just as the civil war was beginning, and the perils he faced were fearful… by the time of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, the civil war was already inevitable”. At best, he could just supervise the division of the United States of America into two separate countries, like Yahya Khan did in 1971 when Pakistan split into two. The defections in the army were too enormous to handle. But Abraham Lincoln was a leader who was destined, in the words of Walt Whitman, to “become the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the 19 th century”. More than fourteen thousand books have been written on him and the practice has not stopped. (To be continued)
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