Small victories of lazy liberalism

We make do with the ephemeral liberal joys that come our way

Maybe it’s the circumstances that tightly shut down all avenues for real, systemic change. Or maybe, it’s just sloth; the insufficiency of courage and willpower that it takes to organise and push for purposeful change. Either way, the bar’s been lowered and we’re all too easily impressed with half-liberal gestures.

Holi, Easter, and Diwali have been declared public holidays through the adoption of a national assembly resolution, although there are a few more technicalities to consider. A notification is yet to be handed out by the government, which means that the announcement was not made in time for Holi outside Sindh on 24^th March. I highly doubt the delayed notification has simply been the result of laziness in filling out the necessary paperwork and wading through the procedural technicalities. One wouldn’t want to tether a Hindu festival with Pakistan Day on 23rd March, after all, to make a two-day holiday package. As if this NA resolution – this little gesture of non-Muslim acceptance – isn’t scandalous enough!

But that’s been of little concern among most liberal and moderate crowds across the country. We’re quite easy to please, especially in an environment when a move as simple and logical as this has had conservatives frothing from the corners of their mouths. “This is an Islamic Republic!”. So be it, but you’re the ones who promise us that Islam allows equal rights and opportunities to minorities — and I’m sure it does. So what drives your opposition to public holidays for non-Muslim festivals, the same way that Muslims get public holidays for Eid?

Still, this isn’t enough.

Make a list of all the troubles that beset the religious minorities of Pakistan. On this list, arranged in descending order of priority, where precisely is an inability to openly celebrate Holi expected to lie, in your opinion? Number 3? Number 28?

Outside of Sindh, Hindus technically do not have the right to an officially recognised marriage; let alone have a public holiday to squirt coloured water at one another. It’s appropriate to spare a sentence in recognition of Sindh’s leadership in the struggle for equality irrespective or the citizens’ religion.

An initial clause in the draft Hindu Marriage Bill proposed the annulment of a Hindu marriage, in the event of one of the partners converting to another religion. Thankfully, Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwami managed to amend the bill. After all, the Aurat Foundation reports that as many as 1,000 girls are forcibly converted to Islam each year. This clause, as Senator Farhatullah Babar puts it, “amounts to promoting forced conversions not only of young unmarried girls but also of married Hindu women”.

The clause was removed, but it limns the lengths our lawmakers would go to, to ensure that the dominant religious group of the country always has the last word, even in bills meant for minority rights; caveats and clauses that would put Rumpelstiltskin to shame.

In this atmosphere, liberals grasp at whatever they can for a “mauka” to bring out a box of fireworks gathering dust and cobwebs.

These opportunities come in the shape of tiny social liberal victories, and rarely any meaningful change. Most commenters around the country, like Hamza Ali Abbasi, reiterate their support for minority rights while also decrying secular reforms.

The idea is simple: we don’t particularly hate minorities, or have some sadistic need to watch them suffer. But we don’t want to give them anything that challenges our supremacy in a republic primarily of Muslim citizens. They can have their rights, as long as they don’t take away from our overwhelming privileges.

These privileges come in many social and legal forms. According to Article 227, no law may be enacted that is repugnant to Islamic injunctions. This privilege is not extended to laws repugnant to the injunctions of Christianity, Hinduism, or any other religion that may be practiced in this country. Cow slaughter, for instance, would’ve been banned a long time ago, if it did.

A Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) is made for this purpose; an institution that is sometimes circumvented by the democratic institutions in order to pass socially or politically progressive laws. A bill to prevent underage marriages was struck down after the CII deemed it ‘un-Islamic’. An outraged CII recently threatened the Punjab Assembly with Article 6, dealing with treason, for not consulting the Council on Women Protection Bill; a bill which almost certainly would’ve been deemed un-Islamic, and not passed without serious amendments.

There are a series of laws that disproportionately target non-Muslim minorities. Non-Muslim villages and colonies are largely open to plunder and destruction. Forced conversions continue to be a major problem, fuelled by the absence of marriage equality, meaning that married Hindu women are re-married off to Muslim men, with no official documentation to prove their Hindu marriages.

The bourgeois were incensed by the “illegal” Christian slums in Islamabad. Few knew that many Christian slum-dwellers were residents of Mehrabad, on the outskirts of Islamabad, who had fled in terror after a mufti accused one of the members of their community of ‘blasphemy’. Those who doubt the power and entitlement of the dominant religious group over the minorities in such cases, have not paid attention to Gojra, Joseph Colony, and the brutal lunching in Kot Radha Krishan.

Too anemic to press on for meaningful secularisation and socialisation, we make do with the ephemeral liberal joys that come our way. It is a state of surrender where a reduction in the price of nail polish would count as a women’s rights victory, and a move to possibly allow public holidays for religious festivals of the non-Muslims, counts as a landmark accomplishment for minorities.