And why men enjoy witnessing the downfall of high and mighty
Laugh your hearts out, dearest sirs and ma’ams. Laugh as you witness the House of Sharif being slowly shredded apart as its patriarch and scions attend court hearings. Laugh as we punish the symptoms of our dreaded blight, while the disease’s reign continues. Laugh as you witness the top predator being relegated to perdition by more powerful, more mighty, more vicious beasts. Laugh, and be not ashamed, for mankind enjoys witnessing the downfall of high and mighty since the first dusk that dawned on society.
Our voices have turned hoarse still we continue our verbal crusade against corruption; in our heart of hearts we regret missing our share in the ever shrinking pie called Pakistan. Our sleepless nights fill our hearts with dread as we look for shards of certainty amidst an uncertain future. Our hopes find refuge in robed Lordships who have played second fiddle to every uniformed saviour we had in three score and ten years since inception. Our Sisyphean cycle continues unabated, uninterrupted, unhindered.
Turn a new leaf, we are told. Forget what went in days and decades now dead, we hear from the pulpit. Let us correct all that ails, we hear from sages. The prophets of present tell us to burn the history books en masse. The preachers of Lord Amnesia teach us to avoid warnings of the ancients. The nabobs of Takht-e-Mustaqbil entice us with bliss and abundance that awaits us once we shed the baggage of the bygone era.
Unlike popular understanding, the rule of law is a bulwark against exemplary justice-to make an example of an individual for all others. Also, it envisions that all individuals, whether wealthy or impoverished, are to be dealt in equal accordance of law and lastly law will be uniform for all segments of society. We, being the firm believers of great man theory, know for a fact that the road to utopia is paved with decapitated heads of corrupt politicians. So, the sooner we sever them, the nearer to Eden we will be.
Justice, dearest sirs and ma’ams, is not same as punishment, there is neither a shade of ill-will nor a shred of vindictiveness present on it. Despite having a long, eventful past the ideal of justice hasn’t aged gracefully. In the beginning, no doubt, all that was expected of it was to punish the wrongdoer in kind. Do unto the perpetrator what the perpetrator did unto the victim, pure and simple retribution was mistaken for justice. It was the age of divinely appointed kings and ‘gods on earth’ pharaohs. The judgment of the mighty was the dictate of justice. It was the time when justice went into exile and was replaced by revenge and/or mercy (depending on what end one finds himself). The mood swings of those in power primarily defined who’ll be spared and who’ll head to the gallows. And things remained hunky-dory for long.
Few centuries back, humankind realised that power to execute laws, authority to make laws and duty to interpret those laws should be entrusted to three different entities rather than one know-it-all being. The fear of power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely was countered by separation of power between three branches of government namely, executive, legislature and judiciary. What them philosophers failed to contemplate, and thus offer a remedy for, was a situation where one of the branch collude with the armed, uniformed gentleman in boots.
Now, that brings us to our present predicament. It is good to be news-savvy and up-to-date with all that goes around in the world. What is even great is to inculcate a sense of history. I am not saying to view the present as a child of what transpired in the past but to doubt the goings on of the present that are without precedent.
But here we have an abundance of precedents. Every single time, and I repeat, every single time a usurper rose to power, the predecessors of our Lordships became his handmaidens. Every single time a dictator asked for a legal cover, they fixed him with one. Every single time, they had an opportunity to right a mighty wrong, they balked. Every single time, they faced a ‘to be or not to be’, they kept mum and buried the thought.
Justice, as I’ve written before, is a child of myth, magic and folklore, no other concept in the history of mankind has stirred more debate and caused more headaches to us mortals. Fates of countless men, entire kingdoms, many a civilisations perished because they relegated it to bottomless pits. Many others prospered as they revered it, followed its dicta and knew that under her shadow they can tread on the road that leads to the palace where ‘greater good of all’ is the norm, not a mirage or illusion. And as to whether Sharifs ran out of tomorrows or not, we’ll know few years down the line. Too early to write them off, too late to rein them in.
