The few friends that I have left have now all but sworn off PTI-related discussion. This is because every time we start talking about Imran Khan’s chances in the next elections, someone looses a limb. It is also advisable not to bring up the subject of Imran Khan during high pressure situations, such as paintball matches, where one stands to lose more than just an eye. Generally speaking, steer clear of any PTI-doublespeak and you should be fine.
A lot of people are writing, ranting, raving and regurgitating hackneyed witticisms about how Tehreek-e-Insaf is just another bubble and that all the coyotes signing up are the same farm hands that have milked us dry in the past. There are also accusations that the party is merely an establishment tool; that they do not have a strong policy guideline on any issue; that they are suspiciously soft on the Taliban and unnecessarily hard on the US, and so on. Then there are the cautious stoics, who advocate the asking of ‘tough questions’ from the PTI high command – tough questions that are designed to extract real answers to burning questions, not meant for rhetorical purposes but policy decisions.
A lot of people have tried to reason with these Insafians, or PTI trolls. But the consensus seems to be that there is now a clear ‘us and them’ divide in contemporary Pakistani society: Those that are ‘with’ Imran Khan and those that will be burnt at stake when the PTI hordes sweep the next elections. This narrative is disturbingly prevalent among the people I hang out with, so I might have to move to Barbados and change my middle name to ‘Johnston’ if the hordes do ascend to power. I hear Reporters Without Borders will soon be issuing an advisory and before we can say “Big Brother is a Pathan from Mianwali”, we will hear that the US is granting asylum to writers such as the right honourable Waqqas Mir because a post-jalsa Pakistan is not a safe place for any PTI-skeptic. Gone are the days when bold journalists spoke out against injustice or corruption or the establishment or irregularities within the armed forces; now anyone critical of Imran Khan is considered brave.
Such dogmatic disdain for constructive criticism would be troubling if not for the fact that this is Pakistan. Indeed, anyone who dares to speak against the rising tide of public opinion/ignorance should be prepared for reprisals. Fellow revolutionaries may remember Habib Jalib’s epilogue to his iconic reading of the epic ‘Mein ney uss sey yeh kaha’ (available with subtitles on YouTube), where he recounts a meeting with the poet Hafeez Jallundari, who was then adviser to despot-extraordinaire Ayub Khan. The British social scientist and filmmaker Adam Curtis also refers to the supplanting of one autocratic social order with another revolutionary one in his tour de force ‘The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom?’ The clear and present danger here is that the mob which will rally behind Imran’s so-called revolutionary manifesto might end up creating and perpetuating the same inequalities that they are campaigning against. It happened in the French Revolution, what’s to stop it from happening here?
Speaking of asset declaration, a neat little trick that many rich and famous people pull when trying to evade taxes or too many questions, is the valuation of immovable assets at cost price. This means that if a particularly wealthy scion wants to write off his 20-acre mansion, which daddy built him sometime during the early 70s, he will value said property at a ridiculously low Rs 1,000 per acre, or something like that. This is especially true for land that has been obtained on 99-year leases or other similar deals. So even the great Khan Mansion in the swanky (and rural) Islamabad suburb of Bani Gala can be valued at next to nothing, since it was “a gift”.
There would be nothing wrong with this, if the average Joe on the street were also able to do such things. Unfortunately, those who work hard for their money also have the disadvantage of buying things at full price. This means that even if I wanted to write off that house my dad brought in 1999 after having worked for 25 straight years, I couldn’t because my dad, not being a scion of a feudal family, did not acquire it on a 100-year lease at Rs 50 per year.
Come to think about it, this is exactly the kind of inequality Imran Khan says he will be fighting against. And I for one support him in this noble endeavour. I’ll just go now and get my papers ready, so when the mob sweeps into power, I too will have the right to value my Suzuki Cultus at Rs 20,000, because that’s how much I pay for it… every month.