Governor Salmaan Taseers assassination by a police guard has raised many questions. The issue of Blasphemy Laws will of course be debated, though the manner in which that debate has begun unfolding along entrenched positions shows how difficult it would be for us to find common ground and induce decency in the discourse.
Equally important, in the wake of this killing, are other questions. Are there people within the security forces that are motivated more by their religious leanings than the professional requirements of their job? The killer was assigned to protect the governor. He broke the trust and used his advantage to kill the very man he was supposed to protect. His act shows that he put more premium on irrational religious motivation than the oath he had taken and on which basis the state trusted him with uniform, a loaded weapon, and the security of a VIP.
Not only this. Evidence is emerging that the killer was not alone in committing this crime; that other guards were tacitly or actively part of the plan. While they might not have fired at the governor, they allowed the killer, nonetheless, to murder the governor. If even one were not part of the conspiracy, there would be enough time for retaliatory fire. No one fired and as per plan they captured the killer alive.
Now the murderer is subject to due process and is already being hailed as a hero. Theres deep irony in allowing due process to someone who not only broke the norms of his professional responsibilities through an act of deception but by executing another human being denied his victim the very process which he now seeks for himself and which his supporters will press for to get him off the hook. To such low levels have we sunk as a people that large numbers are celebrating the act of murder instead of denouncing it as an act of cowardice and an abomination committed in the name of religion.
But that, as I said, is another debate which if we were alive to where we stand as a society we must undertake with the vigour and intellectual rigour that it demands. I shall here stick to the scary scenario offered by the clear breach of professional norms by anyone who presumably wants to operate on the basis of some supposed religious norm and considers that to be higher than the professional norm. In this, as we have seen, such a person is prepared to use deception to perform an act he considers sacred. Looking into this is crucial because if there is a high percentage of such individuals within the security forces, the organisational integrity and cohesion of the forces are in danger of being undermined.
This man was found unfit for duty in the Special Branch of the police. How was he considered fit, and by whom, to be part of the Elite Force and on the security detail of a VIP who was under threat from extremists? The investigators are already looking into those questions.
There is also a report that he was removed from the detail and got himself placed again. If this is correct and if we also accept that other guards allowed him to complete his murderous mission, then there is a deeper conspiracy here and it could well have an angle other than murder by a religious lunatic. It would make sense for someone to use the handle of religion at this point to get rid of the governor for political reasons. Projecting the act as motivated by religious feelings could make for a great diversionary tactic.
This angle too must be investigated and I am told is being investigated. Yet, one can hardly overemphasise the imperative of putting in place a highly effective and multi-layered personnel reliability programme to screen security forces personnel, especially in a society which has shown a clear tendency to lean towards supra-state ideologies.
There are many contradictions in this society. The killer, going by his surname, is a Brelvi. The Deobandis have been happily killing Brelvis and Shias. The Brelvis and Shias oppose both the violence by the Deobandis and the principle of exclusion on the basis of which such violence is generated. And yet, they are prepared to kill another person and succumb to the same illogic which results in their getting killed by the more violent adherents of another denomination. There are people who would decry Taliban violence and still garland this killer or kill themselves on the basis of religion.
This is not unexpected. A people who consider religion a function of blind emotion rather than informed exegesis lose the capacity for rational argument and decent debate. Such a society must ultimately die by being crushed under the weight of its own contradictions.
This one is dying, let there be no doubt about that. And in one of the deepest ironies its demise will be hastened by democracy. If there ever was a society where democracy meant mobocracy, this is it. And even the most diehard advocates of democracy would agree that mobocracy is not what this country needs at this time.
But to expect that we could even begin to debate such nuances when 300 lawyers have signed the power of attorney to fight the legal battle for this killer. If lawyers cannot see the contradiction inherent in exploiting a legal system while celebrating murder then, as the Fool said in King Lear:
…shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion:
Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,
That going shall be used with feet.
The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times.
