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EDITORIAL: Another shameful day in the life of Lahore

Until two days ago the Punjab government was insisting that Basant would be celebrated come hell or high water. Indeed, the Punjab law minister, Raja Basharat, had thundered in the provincial assembly and defied the mullahs to dare stop President Pervez Musharraf from flying kites in Lahore along with the multitude. Then, like a rat in the dead of night, the Punjab government scurried away from the din of the mullahs and hid behind a ban on kite flying across the province. The giveaway was a pathetic clarification from the Presidency – General Pervez Musharraf, the brave, would come to Lahore for business and not for flying kites. All it needed was a phone call to the loyal chief minister of Punjab. So Raja Basharat and the gullible folk of Lahore can go whistling in the dark! What happened?

It’s the same old wretched story. Whenever a mullah coughs in Ichhra, the mighty national security establishment, armed with nuclear weapons and F-16s and submarines, is inclined to tuck tail and run. It’s called a “tactical retreat” in order to avoid opening another “front”. The problem is that when all such “tactical” retreats are piled one upon another, they end up in a “strategic” rout. What happened in this case is instructive.

The mullahs had threatened to disrupt the festival for many reasons. The country has had an earthquake and it’s bad form to celebrate a festival after such a tragedy; the West has just insulted us with the blasphemous cartoons and we should be foaming at the mouth rather than celebrating; President Bush was in Pakistan recently and we should be cleansing the Land of the Pure instead of blotting the landscape with colour. And so on. The real reason is that the mullahs are killjoys and think that having a bit of fun is un-Islamic. In particular, they have got it into their little heads that the festival is tainted with “Hinduism”. Next stop: Christmas and Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day and New Year’s Day.

That’s not all. On Thursday, the so-called Press Gallery in the Punjab Assembly staged a walkout against kite flying. They threatened not to return to their jobs if the government did not impose a ban on kite flying. Their reason: one of the photographers was injured by kite twine. Notwithstanding the accident are we to take their behaviour to mean that if a reporter were to tragically meet with a fatal car accident outside the assembly we should immediately ban all cars on the roads? Or if a journalist is electrocuted because of an electric malfunction, we should switch off all power to Pakistan? Or if someone is killed in an accident in a factory, we should agitate for the closure of all factories? Frankly, this is ridiculous. Reporters have no business demanding a political decision of this nature. They should write their stories, present the facts, keep their opinions to themselves and let their editors fulminate against the rights or wrongs of any policy. Threatening and blackmailing the government is the job of the opposition and not the media. What we will do and must do is to ensure that all safety procedures are in place and those who are driving or those who are working in a factory are not only familiar with them but are amenable to following them. Athletes die and get injured all the time; car racing, motorbike racing, professional stunts, and a number of other sports, including cricket, have seen deaths and injuries. But the most that is done is to ensure greater safety and security of players. We don’t ban the games.

The cartoon excuse is the worst argument to trot out. Apparently Denmark has already gone in hiding after the fury we unleashed in Lahore and Peshawar. Every car that we destroyed and every building we gutted actually dented the Danish GDP until that country has begun to cringe and tremble. Can we now go back to flying kites and enjoying ourselves a little, or has mourning become a permanent condition with us? What is interesting, however, is that even the Pakistan People’s Party-Parliamentarians has chosen to side with the beards on the Basant issue. Should we be surprised? Not really. The PPPP is a party that has lost all sense of direction. Hunted from pillar to post it has decided to oppose even its own agenda, now hijacked by General Pervez Musharraf, its bete noire, and tag along with anyone, even the beards, if it means pulling General Musharraf down. Having reached rock bottom it has now begun to dig.

Islamabad is ready to bend over backwards to appease the mullahs because it has compelled parties like the PPP to despair to the point of siding with the beards. This is the worst indictment of General Musharraf’s system. Instead of creating a system commensurate with what he is trying to do – presumably, modernising Pakistan – he has continued to move from tactic to tactic without any of the tactical pieces fitting into a larger, long-term strategy. There is no such thing as placating the beards. If you give them an inch they will demand a yard. This is another shameful day in the civil life of Lahore. It is particularly galling that small victories like Basant that came to civil society after years in the cultural wilderness are being snatched from us so cruelly by an extremist miniscule minority with the help of the powerful government of the day. *

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