Let us discover what dharnas plan to achieve and why they fail at it, every time
BLURBS:
The bickering about what motivated the usually docile Barelvis to wield batons and follow the example of their least-loved Deobandi cousins is incessant. Masses are also angered over vandalising of Metro stations and damage caused to public property
Kudos to our government for not succumbing to the forces of barbarism. It is also about time that the dangerous fad of staging a dharna and putting entire cities under the pall of fear and anxiety be weeded out too
This time around, they came, they sat, few got dehydrated and were hospitalised; others persisted. And then their leader announced victory. They celebrated, raised slogans, packed up and left for their homes.
And that is how another dharna went poof.
The bickering about what motivated the usually docile Barelvis to wield batons and follow the example of their least-loved Deobandi cousins is incessant. Masses are also angered over vandalising of Metro stations and damage caused to public property.
What, however, the denizens of the capital mourned the most was loss of cellular service for four whole days. As, for many of them life without bread might tough, but without cell reception it’s sheer hell.
Leaving hell aside. Let us refresh our memory about dharnas or sit-ins as they translate in English.
In the beginning, there was a certain Mr Qadri. No, not the one celebrated by the ashiqaan as martyr. The other one, the one who spends his summers in Canada and loves to be ‘contained’ while in his country of origin.
Shaykh-ul-Islam (advocate) Allama Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri (gold medallist in LLB from Punjab University) started the dharna fad still in vogue. The 2012 long march-cum-dharna lasted four days and met its demise when Mr Qadri announced victory from his container. The victory, however, utterly failed to translate into anything palpable.
And then silence reigned supreme for some time. In the meanwhile, the N-league replaced PPP in centre and Kayani made way for Raheel.
August of 2014 didn’t augur well for government. IK entered the capital to dethrone the PM with his azadi march (also called tsunami march). This time, however, Shaykh-ul-Islam was demoted to a sideshow as his inqilab march arrived and camped just outside the red-zone.
Their mission? To bring down the government by use and/or show of force.
Once again, they came, they sat and they waited. And while they waited, the IK buffs sang and danced to pass time. The Qadri devotees, being averse to such idle and earthly pleasures took up grim activities like arranging coffins and digging graves.
The government, in all its wisdom, left them to their own devices. Eventually, the Qadri-brigade, fagged and dog-tired, bailed out after nine weeks, leaving behind many graves sans corpses.
IK and his lot persevered till calamity struck in the guise of the Peshawar school massacre. Being the centre of attention of all and sundry for more than four months, D-Chowk finally wore its deserted look again.
The government, back then, showed maturity by opting for wait-and-watch and not giving IK and TuQ any martyrs to fuel their revolutionary fire. Simone de Beauvoir’s eternal quote, ‘If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat’ can aptly sum up the twin dharnas of cousins in entirety.
The red-zone came back to its silent, solitary self.
The calm of D-Chowk gave way to chaos as last week of March, 2016 witnessed the hitherto apolitical members of majority sect gathered for the chehlum of Qadri (the martyred one) forcefully marched into the capital. They walked all the way from Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi to D-Chowk, mostly on foot. The baton-wielding, beard-keeping, Shalwar-Kameez clad lovers of Qadri the martyr wreaked havoc on public property en route.
The cussed lot managed to enter the red-zone with their set of motley demands ranging from enforcement of Nizam-e-Mustafa to freeing of their members from jails.
The government, now uber experienced at tackling dharnas of varying shades and hues, opted to hold dialogue and refrained from using force, which is commendable; it denied the Barelvi leadership the corpses they craved in order to perpetuate their topsy-turvydom.
Now, let us put our curious Historian’s Hats on and ask a few uneasy questions.
Q.1: Why do these dharnas promise heaven on earth and end up making lives of earthlings hellish?
Q.2: Why the great unwashed are used as cannon fodder by mighty messiahs on wheeled pulpits?
Q.3: Why dharnas failed repeatedly and not even once proved to be anything but a pestering nuisance?
Leaving first and second questions for long-term soul searching due to their overly-rhetorical nature, let’s try to answer the third one.
A dharna aims at ideals of revolution. The world is divided between those who are present at dharna (allies) and those who are not (enemy). This oversimplification is further enhanced by grandiose delusions shunning stark and omnipresent reality. The fiery speeches are made, rulers are abused more for imagined grievances than actual acts. Then umpires and divine forces are conjured up for help and guidance. And ultimately, the passions subside, the crowd melts off, the expenditures pile up, the messiah himself gets tired of this Sisyphean mode of things.
Then comes the end. A face-saving exit is sought. The government gives one readily. The dharna people either weep with tears or celebrate with slogans and return to their lives as they left them. The rising inflation, ubiquitous unemployment, law and order situation, health and education woos embrace them back. The ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ are unleashed on these children of lesser mortals.
Kudos to our government for not succumbing to the forces of barbarism. It is also about time that the dangerous fad of staging a dharna and putting entire cities under the pall of fear and anxiety be weeded out too. Now, that the government has mastered the act of dharna-management, it must make arrangements that next time a handful of people won’t be allowed to march in the most sensitive zone in the capital and hold whole populace hostage to their dubious demands and sketchy agendas.
Since, I have to conclude this piece. I do so by slightly altering what Beckett’s Estragon utters in his play ‘Waiting for Godot’.
‘Nothing changes, nobody comes, everybody goes, and it’s awful.’
And awful, it was.