- And two other questions
‘That Meesha Shafi decided to raise her voice in the face of such huge social and professional ramifications says a lot, doesn’t it?’ After duly congratulating her for her courage, this is the commonest feminist/liberal response to Meesha’s recent decision to join the #MeToo ranks by making sexual harassment allegations against Ali Zafar. The liberal pundits are careful to say that thorough investigations should be carried out (our standard response to all problems ranging from sexual harassment all the way to the Fall of Dhaka), but in the same breath they point out the all-too-real consequences for a woman if she dares to make such allegations against a man in a society like ours. ‘No woman would speak up if it weren’t true, would she?’ they ask rhetorically.
Well, wouldn’t she? Not to say, of course, that Meesha isn’t telling the truth. But is it as simple as that? For starters, what consequences are we talking about here? There are a lot of serious ramifications of such allegations in a middle-class environment, but there’s nothing middle-class about Meesha’s friends, her family, and even her fame. She is not someone like a Salman Khan whose fame, despite his enormous wealth and stature, still depends heavily on the masses. Yes, there has been some backlash from some sections of the society but that hardly matters to Meesha, whose support base solely comprises the upper classes; and for that elite demographic this sort of allegation is about independence, courage of conviction, equality of the genders, and therefore something to be proud of. And sure enough, she has been praised and assured of support from people around her for her decision to speak up.
Again, this is not to say that Ali Zafar didn’t indulge in conduct unbecoming of a gentleman. It’s a foolish man indeed who would vouch for the behaviour of another man around ladies. To paraphrase the legendary JE Gordon: the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a lady are difficult to predict analytically. So, while Ali may very well have been guilty, the point is that the ‘argument’ employed to show why that appears to be the case is simply not good enough.
Ours is a country where the politicians are busy amassing huge assets abroad. The lawmakers are busy in their housing societies and general property dealing. Singers and cricketers are preaching
Tumhein kya? In the days leading up to and following Khawaja Asif’s disqualification by the Islamabad High Court, there have been all sorts of debates for and against the judgment. There have been the legal discussions regarding whether the punishment (disqualification for life) fits the crime; there have been the usual cries of witch-hunting against the forces of democracy; there have been arguments about whether (and when) the income from the foreign firm was declared in the relevant documents, and whether it was a neglectful omission or a deliberate act. The constitutionalists have been discussing what the constitution says (or doesn’t say) about the matter. The democrats, after a comfortable amnesia of thirty years, have suddenly been reminded of the horrible fact that articles 62 and 63 were introduced in the constitution by a military dictator.
While lawyers, democrats and the constitutionalists grappled with these (and other) questions, another question of a different ilk was also doing the rounds: ‘What’s wrong in the country’s foreign minister (earlier the minister for defense, and the minister for water and power) being on the pay-roll of a foreign firm?’ some innocent souls have naively been demanding. This is of course a variant of the ‘Tumhein kya?’ question, made famous by none other than Nawaz Sharif a few months ago.
Although it sounds rather foolish, this is the sort of question that challenges the wits of even the best among those trained in the art of rhetoric. No mean rhetorician myself (if for a moment I am immodest enough to acknowledge the fact), I too was stumped by this question recently, and on more than one occasion. After much deliberation, I guess the only reasonable response to it is the one given by Louis Armstrong when asked what Jazz was: ‘If you have to ask, you’ll never know.’
Whose job is it anyway? The intellectuals have a new worry these days: the activism and over-reach of the courts. They are incessantly asking rhetorically whose job it is to run the country: the elected representatives’ or the judges’. The provision of clean drinking water and health and education infrastructure is the job of the government and not of the judges, who should instead focus on the enormous backlog of cases pending in the different courts of the country, they add.
This sounds like a reasonable position, and it’s not easy to refute it academically. Which puts the common man in some difficulty. Where is he to turn to if the judges shouldn’t, and their elected representatives won’t focus on the above because of being too busy in their different business ventures, and in defending their bosses against corruption charges?
Ours is a country where the politicians are busy amassing huge assets abroad. The lawmakers are busy in their housing societies and general property dealing. Singers and cricketers are preaching. The military is making feature films. Serving ministers are providing consultancies to foreign firms. The prime minister says he is not the prime minister.
And now the courts are trying to do the government’s job for it. Well, why the hell not?