Moral Beacon
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

 

Discussion often centers on what is the nation’s prevailing predominant ideology. It is, in effect, the ideology of making money quick, with shortcuts. It has soiled polity, society, and sports.

Despite all the slogans of change, this ideology ensures that the same stale faces get recycled and keep cropping up again and again. This has been the one recurrent theme. It is sickening to see hacks glorify whosoever is sitting on the chair as a messiah and a ‘last hope.’ The nomenclature of ‘last hope’ is nothing less than ‘Shirk’ and sends a message that the belief in ‘Tauheed,’ is mere lip service when the actions conform to idolatry. Idolatry it has been and is when one witnesses the massive influx of praise on the existing powers that be.

There were gullible assumptions that free media would heighten public awareness. Instead, it spread exponentially increased bigotry, hate, rumors, and ignorance. The incessant diet of unverified misinformation has scrambled the brains of the youth. Instead of governance, energies are consumed in partisan dog fights. The 100% certainty of human life is death. Thus far, past precedent statistically suggests the near-certainty of all Islamabad regimes meeting an ignominious end.

But first, the status quo continues. Its power is perpetuated through ballot boxes. The grip of the super-rich and of overfed monarchical dynasties remains tightly fastened while the flock, aspiring for democracy, is easily distracted by the occasional lollipop of elections, which essentially continues the situation as is. The coalition of the plutocrats and kleptocrats ensures it.

The second salient point intertwined with the above is the low priority the culture has historically afforded to integrity. The incapable flourish. Predictably, there is continuance of the distasteful Punjab propensity for sycophancy.

Hiding and falsifying remains a recurring norm. Insufficient attention has been paid to self-examining, streamlining and strengthening the process of decision-making. The underlying common thread has been repetition of past blunders and absence of honest critique, thereby evading witheringscrutiny.

The Dacca Debacle of 1971 stands out. Fragmentary forces continue to fester nearly 50 years later. Is the nation better off? How many know what occurred? What is occurring is a slow diluting of national self-worth and pride, while hardening identity politics along ethnic, sectarian, and provincial fault-lines. It is at the core of misgovernance.

Instructive it is to look at America today. Much of its myth-making of a glittering past – which never existed – has now been punctured by the myth-busting twin convergence of Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter, as detailed in a front-page story in the Washington Post of July 20, 2020 (“Pandemic Exposes America’s Flaws and Fissures.”)

In face of dual threats, America, with all its pretensions of ‘Sole Superpower’ and massive military and technological might, appears clueless and helpless. Mary Trump, the President’s niece, has, through her best-seller book, lifted the purdah on the inhumane dysfunctionality within.

As always, the threat comes from misdirection. And the remedy also comes from self-correction.

Should a pathway forward be found, it has to come through a moment of epiphany.

First, a realization that the system itself is a part of the problem. It rewards the incapable and the nefarious. In the July 20, 2020, Supreme Court ruling, Justice Baqar was spot-on when he stated “pygmies were selected, nurtured, promoted and brought to prominence and power.”

And, second, get the public habituated to notions of belonging and expectations of fairness. That forms the pillars of nation-building.

The core challenge is fundamentally moral. No movement has laid a glove on it yet. A moral beacon beckons.