Lalu Yadav as King Lear?

“How can we live, without our lives?”                                                                                                             -John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath

 I have borrowed the title of this column from a recent article by Uttam Sengupta, Consulting Editor of the National Herald, India.  It is fascinating to understand why Sengupta has symbolically compared Lalu Yadav, a popular Indian politician, to King Lear.

 King Lear is William Shakespeare’s 1605/06 play set in England.  The King wants to retire from duty as king, and decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, but the biggest share to the one who loves him most.  The two older daughters flatter the king, but the youngest doesn’t know how to express her love. So, the king gives the flatterers half the kingdom each, and in anger disowns the younger daughter. In due course, the king goes mad because of the mistreatment he receives from his two elder daughters, and finally dies of sadness and depression.

 Lalu Yadav’s eldest daughter is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, and two of his sons are legislators in Bihar. Lalu Yadav, himself, is in jail now, sentenced by an anti-corruption court on corruption charges. What will become of Lalu Yadav in the end is the drop scene of this real-life play – one can only guess.

A Note to the Sitting Prime Minister

Many are the things that man                                                                                                              Seeing must understand                                                                                                                        Not seeing, how shall he know                                                                                                          What lies in the hand                                                                                                                          Of time to come?”                                                                                                                                    —Sophocles, the Greek playwright

“That moment will never come. The moment to give yourself to your art (dreams, political ambitions, public welfare plans) is now.”

Prime Minister: What Pakistan needs is a Soft Revolution – but I will come to that a little later in this column.

First, let me go back a little, though not too far, to December 27, 2017, to your interview with Nadeem Malik on a Samaa Television Talk Show.

It was a pleasure to watch you: a confident, calm, calculated, articulate, decisive-looking and well-prepared Prime Minister responding with assurance and personal conviction to the questions asked while sitting comfortably in your own private home in opulent surroundings and explaining to the nation your government and party’s political ideological premise and discourse in the prevailing critical circumstances. It was, indeed, a good performance.  In my professional capacity and analytical judgement, Prime Minister, you appeared to be a person in complete control of yourself.  Indeed, your articulation, optimistic attitude, controlled behavior and ability to communicate effectively must have been noted and admired by many of the listeners.

However, as a common citizen of this country, among millions of others, I am encountering several conceptual difficulties in understanding the full extent of your ideological paradigm explicitly stated in the said interview. Consequently, many questions come to mind and need to be raised for clarification purposes.

Conduct Yourself with Spiritual Politics!

“Who dwells in a glass house must not invite the hostile sentiments of pebble throwers!”

As she was quoted verbatim on the front page of the Express Tribune, Ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s angry, anguished and defiant daughter, Maryam Nawaz, reacting to the recently held APC in Lahore said, “All PMLN opponents are worth a used tissue paper.”  One simply wonders about the use of such language. Did things have to sink so low in the so-called democratic Islamic Republic of Pakistan?

I count myself one among the millions of Pakistani common folks, the awam, who are PMLN leadership’s opponents on the basis of political, ideological, philosophical, historical, analytical, and above all, moral-ethical reasons based on factual arguments and verifiable authentic evidence. However, let us consider for the sake of argument, the possibility that all of us, the PMLN opponents, may be absolutely flawed in our reasoning and the understanding of the entire political, economic, social situation in the country at the moment. The question that arises is: Are all of us “used tissue papers” worth nothing?

Understanding Americans!

If you wish to understand Donald Trump, the US President, you will have to understand the collective consciousness of the common American populous in the context of an overall national psyche.  There are two fundamentals to the American psyche, that is, of the majority of Americans, barring a few of them invaded by multi-culturalism and a global wave of wider and expansive universal political awareness.  But, this is a rare commodity in America and, by and large, the entire nation is “one-dimensional,” sharing rigid and determined social and political attitudes that have remained untiredly unchanged over the decades of American existence as a nation, specifically in the aftermath of the Second World War and the emergence of the US as the dominant global military and economic power.

The first fundamental of the overall American national psyche is that the majority of Americans are overly obsessed by the idea of “appearance,” and this is of a psychological-political dimension: Americans wish to be seen as generous, kind and charitable, democratic and tolerant, politically correct and global in their political-cultural outlook. Hence, America has a culture of social-cultural conformity that is unshakably voluntary – nearly everyone shares the same views and attitudes over almost every social and political norm: “We’re Number One!” There are hardly any diametrically opposed opinions on most political or social issues.

Why I Read Books & Yet Illiterate!

In an age of digital technology that controls our daily existence — mutual communication and human relationships by Facebook, Twitter, and above all massive electronically manipulated messaging by sophisticated telephones and other digital means — someone like me with a doctorate from an Ivy League university in the US is utterly and absolutely illiterate in the said field.  And, mind it, this illiteracy is by choice – completely self-imposed.  It is not, I must say, because of any mental-psychological impediment or intellectual disability. In fact, it may sound quite foolish, but I tend to enjoy my ignorance of the subject and the non-practice of it.  The truth is that there is implicit uncomplicatedness and simplicity in not being involved with digital communication; it is this personal innocence that I cherish.

My philosophical and conceptual view on the subject is that I do not wish to snap myself away from the intimate community experiences that I have grown up with, known and encountered.  No way! I cannot substitute digital messaging for real face-to-face conversations. Call me, if you wish, out-of-sync with contemporary civilization, but I have no desire to lose myself in this digital chimera that replaces intimate human relationships with an addiction for a vast global network of auxiliary acquaintances that exist only in an abstract sense through Facebook, Twitter and other digital interconnectedness without phenomenological and contemplative reality.

But Why? Why? Why?

“Will you kill me or your father if it turns out that your family is at war with ours, in the current struggle for political power?”

“I listened…thinking what it must be like to a termite, forever busy tearing apart, eating into the foundations which others had built.”

from Search, Farah Nuruddin

There is a rage in my mind and heart burning like a fire. There is an uncontrollable anger in my body and soul. There is a tremendous anguish stretching over me like an entire horizon – just the way millions of Pakistani people are feeling these days over the killing of 6 innocent citizens and a policeman (latest report, 11 killed) at the Faizabad Interchange protest.

Why did Zohaib, Jahanzeb, Irfan, Adeel, and other innocent human beings along with a policeman hit in the head by a brick have to die?  For what reason? What purpose? And then, we have conveniently granted these innocent lives “martyrdom” so that their souls can ascend to Heaven while their families left behind suffer on this earth where human life exists. Ask a widow, an orphaned child, a father, a mother, a brother or a sister what it is like losing a dear one and enduring endless sorrow for the rest of their lives.

I believe it is about time that our so-called democratic leadership and national managers understand that democratic governance is all about compassion, empathy with the people of the nation, and caring for them. It is about providing safety, security, stability and service to the masses. And in a democratic system of governance, the common people have to be listened to. They are not simply pawns that provide votes to put some shady characters in political power. In the context of the protest, the writ of the government and “ego” of the powerful rulers should have been of secondary importance. The foremost element of a democratic regime is to steadfastly follow the ethical-moral norms that stipulate that the people’s right of “freedom of expression” is not to be responded to with the application of lethal state force when there is a clash of opinion between the political managers and a section of society.  There must be a willingness on the part of the state functionaries to negotiate, first and foremost!

Not Who but What

Machiavelli, the 15^th century Italian philosopher, observed the following in his political treatise The Prince: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

Indeed, Machiavelli’s observation is absolutely accurate; that is what the modern systems experts and management gurus also testify.  On top of that, global history tells us that making a political systemic change in the ongoing political chronicles of a nation is a most difficult task. It is one of those experimental exploits that is loaded with explosive possibilities going either way because of “the nature of the beast.” Human beings as “political animals” are most often unpredictable in fluid situations.

And yet, in spite of the accuracy of Machiavelli’s historical observation and its contemporary validation, today’s Pakistan will have to make a fresh start in its ongoing voyage to commence a struggle to attain a truly democratic political systemic change in this country. It is a difficult, in fact, arduous and toilsome task – yet, we, the Pakistani people, have no choice – no other option. At the moment, Pakistan is facing an existential threat from the forces of the political status quo that are hell-bent on bringing this nation to the ultimate and absolute political, economic and social abyss.

Pakistan has to be saved from the clutches of “political vultures” and “political wolves” who have torn it apart through a vicious self-serving 8 years of “muk-muka” divisive democracy that has brought this nation to the brink of possible political destruction.

Love at First Sight

Have you ever had the experience of falling in love at first sight? Indeed, such an encounter always has a mythical and mystical quality to it. It’s the loss of control over one’s normal state of mind; it is an absolute emotional condition sans rationality with overcharged hormones, a phase of semi-madness as the human condition submits to blind emotions at moments of randomness.  It strikes without warning and virtually ravages the victim’s sense of rationality – sometimes for a considerable period of time in a state of emotional helplessness. Call it a rapturous phenomenon.

Interestingly, this human condition has a political dimension as well. With a new body of knowledge on political behavior and psychology, we are discovering diverse elements that affect a person’s political beliefs and the factors that cause them. One of the rather ignored areas is how “physical appearance” molds our political affiliations and its relations to an unconscious process in the selection of a political leadership. 

The People Who Were Fed Donkey Meat!

A dear friend of mine from Indian-held Kashmir, a medical doctor by profession and a political activist, jokingly asked me the other day: “Is it because the Pakistani people have been fed donkey meat, and dead donkey meat at that, that they are unable to choose their political leaders intelligently?”

He observed that the Pakistani populous  seem to pick their leaders rather blindly; after all, the Zar-Naw brothers and their families keep on making political comebacks time and again in spite of the fact that they carry such heavy baggage of unimaginable, inexcusable and unpardonable corruption as well as misuse of their political power for personal vested interests. He said only fools are capable of such repeated self-violence. What could explain the enormity of such foolishness and lack of political consciousness and judgement in this time and age when the masses all over the world are struggling to rid themselves of the entrenched political-economic status quo from the past?

Proposing a pseudo-medical opinion, my friend suggested that perhaps this state of mind of Pakistani citizens at large could be attributed to their questionable eating habits, which are causing disorders including emotional-mental distortion. The point he made is, of course in a kidding manner, that since donkeys are known to be foolish, dumb and brainless, eating their meat might affect the human psyche, the center of thought and behavior.  There is a scientific link between culinary habits and mental-physical conditions, so it must be, then, that most Pakistanis are unknowingly eating dead donkey meat!   He even implied that it was a planned political project aimed at getting these results.

The World According to the Zar-Naw Brothers!

Those who are interested in nation-building and in understanding what has happened in our motherland, Pakistan, in the last 8 years of democratic rule can probably recognize that the word Zar-Naw in the title of this column is an abbreviation of two names.

The first is Asif Ali Zardari, the former president of Pakistan, the husband of late Benazir Bhutto and a senior member of her cabinet, the present co-Chairman of the Pakistan’s People’s Party, and the father of Bilawal Bhutto, the imprudently, injudiciously, and above all, undemocratically imposed Chairman of the PPP. Let us be reminded that Asif Ali Zardari is the same man known for his public speech  threatening  an important national institution and to shut down Pakistan, saying “aent se aent baja dang gey. ” He’s the well-known Mr. 10% (during Benazir’s tenure as Prime Minister), the ex-owner of Surrey Palace in the UK, and the holder of unknown, unspecified bank accounts in Switzerland and other countries. He’s allegedly the owner of several sugar mills in the Sindh Province, thousands upon thousands of acres of land in Pakistan and holds unspecified properties in France, the US, the Gulf States and some other counties worldwide.  And he’s generally accused of being the godfather of corrupt mafia-type outfits in the Sindh province.

The other name is Nawaz Sharif, the 3-time Prime Minister of Pakistan, former Cabinet Minister and Chief Minister of Punjab, and the re-elected party leader of the PMLN after being disqualified as Prime Minister recently by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on charges under constitutional rules (62 and 63) and being indicted in a NAB court for massive corruption and amassing wealth beyond known and legitimate sources of income. Above all, he is the relentless proponent of the Sharif dynasty as the future political masters of this nation and proud promoter of his daughter, Maryam Nawaz Safdar, as the future leader of his party and of this country. Indeed, this introduction to Mian Nawaz Sharif would not be complete without mentioning his son-in-law, Capt. (retired) Safdar, a spectacle to watch and a disturbing phenomenon to hear as he makes nauseating parliamentary speeches and public remarks full of venom unbelievably hurtful to our diverse minority citizens and harmful to the nation’s unity. It must also be mentioned that Mian Nawaz Sharif’s two sons, (bearing most revered Islamic names) Hassan and Hussain, while sitting in London have publicly disowned Pakistan, asserting that they are British citizens subject to no Pakistani laws (though they claim property rights in London and elsewhere seemingly bought by Pakistani money).