How does one cook up a revolution? The support of the establishment is a good start, the illusion of “change” another good ingredient, a sit-in or two would help too, but in today’s world, capturing the internet space is a prerequisite. Forget the people or the drone strikes, Twitter is where PTI’s revolution is being made.
Some days ago, I had retweeted a link to an article on the Christian Science Monitor which claimed, “With his good looks and willingness to speak plainly, Imran Khan is to Pakistan what Sarah Palin is to the US.” Interesting comparison, I had thought, given how seemingly ideology-less leaders hold that much sway among those desiring change for the better. What I hadn’t realised was that skipper’s tigers actively searched for his name and made themselves party to any conversation about the PTI. And thus begins the abuse; there is no ideological engagement of any sort, just a mindless defence of a party and its leader. One of the women who dared to disagree with the PTI was met with accusations of having had romantic engagements in college. Through such shaming, it seemed, the PTI was trying to enforce its presence. In short, the decades-old tactic used by intelligence agencies in Pakistan to intimidate and silence are replicated in word and spirit by Imran’s new tigers.
But abusive and unrefined activists are little of my concern: the extent to which PTI activists go is worrisome because the “youth” Imran Khan claims to represent stand not only for the same tactics of silencing through intimidation but also the ideological thrust of a patriarchal, parochial and religiously-dichotomous Pakistan.
Whatever the “liberals” may be accused of, certainly there is fundamental agreement that in a better, more vibrant Pakistan of tomorrow, social justice will be the norm and not a delusion, where the youth are not simply embroiled in a rat race but in building a better state and society, where gender loses its political baggage, where the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and intersex community has a respectable place and space in society, where religion remains a personal matter and ceases to create political and societal hatred, where we can all coexist despite polar ideologies. PTI’s online support is divided when it comes to this vision: one PTI activist claimed that he was a “baighairat liberal” while chiding me; others turn to Islam to highlight the foundations of Pakistan.
Going by the tweets of the PTI’s online support, many of them seem to be based abroad: visions of a better future from the lens of a diaspora, although made in the right spirit, tend to reflect the tensions and contradictions which they are subjected to. Many scholars, for instance, have argued about the crisis of male sexuality in the Pakistani diaspora in England: with women finding themselves better accommodated in the English system of education, and consequently employment, young men have been left frustrated with their inability to be of some productive use.
Of course, not all PTI stalwarts are based abroad, but my point is that the “youth” which lends its emotion to Imran Khan is not the kind that identifies with social justice, equality of rights, and the right to debate and disagreement as being discussed in Pakistan in 2011 – perhaps because the ideal of “change” is far more potent than change itself. One of the criticisms of the Left movement of the early 1970s is that leaders and activists had already cooked up which ministries and departments they would like to be tasked to, much before their revolution even came close to becoming a reality. The same process seems to be at work today: the PTI is cooking up schemes of revolution without necessarily having the grassroots support to do so.
While PTI activists believe skipper is in government on Twitter, their attitudes point to a larger issue for Imran Khan: a party culture that is satisfied with empty rhetoric and grand promises of nothingness, and would crush all ideological opposition rather than engage in polemics. When the PTI was initially formed, it had both a right-wing and a centrist lobby. Over time, though, the right-wing, comprised of many a Jamaat-e-Islami and Jameeyat cadre, dominated and pushed the PTI firmly into the establishment’s lap. The generation that is now entering the PTI poses a different challenge: the “baighairat liberal” types are asking for as much space in the PTI’s polity as the ghairat brigade. Zohair Toru’s “garmi mai kharab” stunt made him more recognisable than even the party’s secretary-general, not just for the world but also for PTI activists themselves. But as the fallout from Toru’s video made obvious, the party is in dire need of some concrete ideal, of a vision defined by its leader, of what all the PTI wants to achieve.
As of now, the PTI is breeding intolerant bigots, cast in the mould of Pakistani security agencies’ vision of what Pakistan should be like. Change? Pfft. Farce? Of course.
I await the abusive repercussions once I tweet this article.
The writer is Deputy City Editor, Pakistan Today, Karachi.