Punjab’s elite is desperately trying to protect its way of life if at all it is a way of life, by carving out spaces where they can enjoy their self-indulgence without being soiled by the polluting touch of common people. They with their huge resources, material and political, amassed by dubious means have created a world guarded by barriers, visible and invisible, thus ensconcing themselves on a leather sofa with a firm intention to remote control the ‘smelling classes’. Their insulation, they think, can keep them at a safe distance from the ever-increasing cacophony of people’s life that has been reduced to a threatening howl of a wounded herd. Ruling class by its very definition is a group whose right to rule has to be proportionate to its capability to deliver on its promise to lead the led to a future better than the present. Its so-called raison d’être is predicated on the promise of fulfilling such an historical responsibility.

Our ruling class, a skewed product of colonial and post-colonial era, has utterly failed to live up to its historical promise.”---Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw--- A day would come when even air and water—would be taxed --“is what Winston Churchill said when in June 1947, the Indian Independence Act was introduced in the British Parliament. The words of this great advocate of colonialism reflected his deep understanding of the mental make-up of the class the colonial rule had created. It derived its life from what was the worst in the old and the new world; feudal apathy and capitalist greed. Its relationship with the colonial structure underpinned by unconditional loyalty to its foreign masters created a servile psyche incapable of thinking independently. The servility suited this class economically and politically as it benefited from the crumbs thrown at it from the large dining table of the colonial enterprise that had acquired a monopoly over the ‘God’s plenty’ in the name of ‘civilising mission’. Expansion of irrigated lands, introduction of mechanised production, setting up of new departments of roads and highways, railways, telephone and telegraph, European type schools, hospitals protected by new legal, judicial and political institutions, helped this class to entrench its position as a sort of bridge between the native subjects and the alien masters.

World war second undermined the vast colonial edifice and the pyrrhic victory of the Allied forces made it unsustainable politically and economically in the face of rising tide of indigenous resistance. In the aftermath of the war U.S.A mounted the international stage as a colossus with its immense economic clout and advanced technological prowess. U.S.A’s participation had a decisive impact on the outcome of the war. Fully aware of its economic and political muscle, envisaging its role as world power it discretely as is well-known now, exerted pressure on Great Britain to quit India as soon as possible. And Britain did quit India just two years after the end of the war handing over power to ‘rascals, rogues, freebooters ‘and ‘men of straw’ it itself had created.

In the absence of communal accord between the sizable Muslim minority and non-Muslim majority India was partitioned into Independent India and a new state called Pakistan comprising the Muslim majority provinces which were industrially some of the most backward regions. What constituted elite in the new state were elements drawn from the upper crust of civil/military bureaucracy and feudal lords/tribal chiefs. Civil bureaucracy and military, a legacy of the colonial past, though well organised and disciplined, were not trained to think independently. Rather they were fashioned to be used as tools of coercion to exploit the subjugated people to extract maximum economic surplus for the industrial growth back home. As the colonial masters had habituated them to the miasma of abject submission they could not breathe in the fresh air of a free country. They did what they could be most capable of; mimicking the role of their previous alien masters. They appeared to be doing what the Inspectoral General of Gogol did; comic shenanigans. Feudal lords /tribal chiefs sitting atop of primitive socio-economic structure were rendered brain dead by their intellectual inertia and social conservatism. All three formed an undeclared pact to promote and protect their common vested interests. The civil and military bureaucracy guarded the interests of feudal lords/tribal chiefs and they in return provided them a semblance of public support giving the shaky system a sort of legitimacy. Hostile posturing by India forced the elite that suffered from the lack of self-confidence, to look for a protector in order to shape its future. The obvious choice was America which could offer urgently needed economic and military aid. Most Pakistanis conveniently forget the fact that initially our elite was more eager than Americans to get into an alliance. No doubt America needed allies in the cold war which started with the end of the Second World War aimed at overthrowing the Soviet Union, considered to be a grave threat to the capitalist order. With American aid Pakistani state started a process of industrialisation, built new factories and sold the same to some of the business and non-business families almost free. Such are the origins of our industrial Czars.

As a consequence of wars with India over Kashmir, national security concern propped up by religious ideology, created a politico-economic structure which was incompatibles with the imperatives of a modern democratic polity. Time came to pay back America when Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in1979. Cold war peaked. America saw a great opportunity and laid a trap for the ‘Bear’. Pakistan being a neighbour of Afghanistan was declared a front line state and prompted with the lure of incentives, economic and socio-political, to play the role of a bulwark against ‘Godless communism’. So the concept of ‘political Islam’ was invented that became a rallying point of Jihadists of the world opposed to communism. Pakistan awash with dollars, weapons, fighters, Afghan refugees and drugs imperceptibly lost its bearings creating space for multiple power centres making the state institutions dysfunctional.

With almost all the institutions in a state of collapse our elite dominated by Punjabis, devoid of will and vision, looks incapable of changing the course. What it has done in a couple of decades in the name of policy making is to abdicate its responsibility as leaders of society and has found an escape route. Why to worry if education is in a shambles. We can send your children to elitist private schools or abroad. No need to fix the deteriorated health service. We can fly our ailing family members to European or American hospitals. Why to bother about social anarchy! We can build new posh colonies away from the sight of the disgruntled plebs. Sense of insecurity! No problem. We can hire personal guards at the expense of state of course. To think about the plebs is a waste of time. What can be done! They breed like rabbits. They are so many. The reason for apathy, poet Brecht says, is “because it’s so many who are suffering?” But “should one not help them all the more because they are many?” Let it be said to our elite: “A smooth forehead suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the terrible news”. And the terrible news is that things are warming up over there in the cheerless streets that surround your islands of comfort. — soofi01@hotmail.com