The state power
State power in some countries is getting just overpowering. Take Russia, which for two centuries has never had a democratic dispensation. The Czars were vilified by the communists, and Czar Nicholas was shot along with his family. They were replaced by people who were a hundred times more ruthless. Now, after a temporary thaw in the days of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, we have Vladimir Putin. The leader of the Opposition, 44-year-old Alexei Navalny, has been sentenced to prison. Not content with poisoning him with a nerve agent which almost killed him had he not been flown to Germany, they brought charges of violating ‘probation conditions’ of a previous fraudulent conviction. He was in Germany for five months recovering from the poisoning, the kind which killed Alexander Litvinenko, the FSB officer. There is a big outcry in Europe, but this kind of thing is now being treated as par for the course. You are free to murder, create mayhem and then issue a strong-worded denial. The state’s power to kill or deny the killing, or putting the blame on the victim, is paramount.
What does a political leader do, recovering from poison which almost kills him? Navalny is reported to be very rich and could have stayed in luxury abroad. But you can’t fight a system while staying outside the reach of its tentacles. The trouble is that Navalny has ideals also, a pretty dangerous thing to be equipped with. If you are constantly attacking a Russian head of state, ideals are a bomb in your coat pocket ticking away. Entire Europe knows it was a state nerve agent which poisoned Navalny and that the courts which try political prisoners are a farce. The question one can ask: ‘is the state a criminal?’ Of course, it is or was in Hitler’s or Stalin’s times. State-sponsored killing would be as old as history. Isn’t the state a much bigger criminal than an individual? Can Jack the Ripper or Al Capone match a state on the rampage?
It is not just Russia. Look at Myanmar. The Junta takes over and dismisses the government on the brazen excuse of ‘voter fraud’. Aung San Suu Kyi is imprisoned. The political ‘party’ the army backed, lost. It is much worse when the army becomes the state — as it did in Burma from 1962 to 2011. The fig leaf of the army just being the army is necessary. Even the fig leaves of judiciary and human rights, with a commission to enforce those rights, offer some palliative. The usual story is unfolding now: protests, the three-fingered salute, car horns blaring and the water canon in action. Rubber bullets have been fired at protesters. If all this escalates, we will see blood on the streets. The chorus of condemnation of the Junta would have been much fiercer if Suu Kyi had raised her voice for the Rohingya. But regrettably, she kept quiet and lost much of her halo. The atrocious treatment of the Rohingya has ethnic and religious dimensions, and this persecution has had ‘national’ approval in Myanmar. Our right-wing parties need to take a lesson from this. National jingoism can take many forms, and religious jingoism can be a part of it. Donald Trump seems to have taken too much of our right-wing time. We need to devote more attention to our neighbours. We need to support democracy in our neighbouring countries, more strongly. Formerly, political exiles from Pakistan and Nepal used to flock to us. Pakistani poets have stayed here for years. Exiled Ranas from Kathmandu came here. Now you don’t see them.
The jackbooted Pakistan state is a veteran in trampling on human rights. It took Pakistanis about half a century to conduct an election, resulting in the Prime Minister getting hanged. (ZA Bhutto could have won without any tampering, but he went for the overkill. Overkill is a syndrome strong rulers are addicted to.) It must be mentioned that the Pakistani military is very watchful of its own rights — in fact, those are the only rights protected in Pakistan. From this beleaguered, army-besieged, and khaki-benighted country, with a puppet in-swing bowler as Prime Minister, comes this delightful story. Gulalai Ismail, human rights activist, daughter of Mohammed Ismail, escaped from Pakistan and finds herself in New York. Imagine the embarrassment of the state, the ISI, IB, Rangers, Paramilitary forces, which I surmise outnumber the electorate, caught flat-footed! Yah Allah, what a pass have things come to. So the state has now jailed her father for sedition and terrorism-financing. Sounds a bit familiar.
The Pakistan judiciary caters to both public sentiment and the state. Killers of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was linking the al Qaeda with the ISI and was beheaded in 2002, have been graciously acquitted by the Sindh High Court. The death sentence on the al-Qaeda operative convicted of beheading Pearl was first reduced to seven years’ imprisonment and now he has been sequestered in a guest house. The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the Sindh government and Pearl’s family against the acquittal.
Nearer home, we are much better off. Some leftists, liberals, tribal leaders, etc, get a smooth passage into Tihar and other salubrious places. The government has differences with farmers, but everything is hunky dory. They have held a dozen peaceful meetings. Farmers bring their own chai paani, government side gets lunches from Parliament canteens. No slogan bazi, no hulla gulla.
