Democracy , simplistically is rule of the majority.
Democracy can only function is a society that goes beyond divisions based on identity, where loyalty to an identity will outweigh other considerations. It can only function in a homogenous society, where the values are same, and moreover, where the rights of individual are protected, and an individual is permitted to seek his/her potential as a human being free from the diktats of those who seek conformity to a particular group identity.
There are different kinds of group identities.
Group identities, such as we see in the USA or Western Europe or Japan, are nation based, and the population holds similar values, around family, and the rights of an individual- a live and let live society. These kinds of societies are the societies, whom we associate with term democracy, as we know it today,
When we speak of democracy in other countries, we come across different challenges. In India for example we find that an election can only be won, by an alignment of disparate groups who have little in common- e.g an alliance of communists with religious based groups, the kind that is in power today- a Congress, supported largely by Islamic voters, with Communists, who are in turn supported by and support Islamic parties, each driven solely by a desire to occupy the seat of power.
In countries like Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world, the society is defined by the Islamic religion, which has a fascist hue, than a homogenous society held together by values that seek the emancipation and liberation of the human spirit.
These societies, are held together under a veneer of community – Islam, but governed by as an oligarchy of feudal families, while the common person is confined to a structure by the priests of its religion, who expound and enforce the values of the religion into the society, and ensure that society as a whole conforms to these tenets. Individuality is punished, and so is any attempt to leave the fold, by fear induced by violence as threat, and then by actual physical violence.
Most members of society would rather conform than risk ostracization from family and societal groups.
Education and liberalization are the enemies of these kinds of these kinds of society, and by that token so is democracy.
Democracy cannot and should not mean a simply rule of the majority. This kind of democracy, be it in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or any other nation dominated by Islam, simply means rule by a religio- fascist group, whose aim was and is to rule and exploit the rest of the society, who are doomed to live out their lives in subservience, in ignorance, without education, and in poverty.
Today a country like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Pakistan is dominated by a religio- fascist society, Islamic, where a simple election by a majority of votes, means the election of those , who will trample of the rights and the harassment of those who do not conform to the majority’s views. The rest of the minorities, e.g. the remaining, Hindus or Buddhists are exploited and have no rights, their daughters kidnapped, and they are forced to convert to Islam. Every ancient religion, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, has been exterminated. or is on the verge of extermination. Steps like the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas or the denial of cremation facilities to the Hindus , Sikhs etc only confirm the overall objective of this neo religio- fascist. Society and their progress to their goal.
It is no accident that even as recently as fifty years ago west Pakistan had a 25% population of Hindus, Sikhs, who are reduced now to an insignificant minority, an underclass living in daily fear.
What democracy can exist then in such a society?
The current situation in Pakistan has to be analyzed in that light.
The choices were between Sharif, and Bhutto and the Islamic parties or the continued rule by the army under Musharraf.
Both Sharif and Bhutto were feudalists, whose wealth and power was inherited from their immense rural holdings and the large number of villages and villagers they had under their heels. Nothing had really changed in the last 60 years. If anything they and the families like them only consolidated their power and access to funds through corruption. Not for nothing were the Bhutto’s were known as Mr. and Mrs. 10 %, because they took a 10 % cut as a bribe of every government contract that was issued.
The armed forces were not to be left behind, and their military-industrial complex were integrated into every industry from agriculture to manufacturing, to drugs. The last was the most lucrative, and to it they provided safe passage, by army convoy to the Islamabad and Karachi, and by Air force transport to the Western destinations. On occasion they would be caught as in the case of the, rapidly hushed up, arrest of a Pakistani Air Force Major in New York for carrying a consignment of drugs.
At the center of this nexus was the US bureaucracy the CIA , and the State Department , to whom all this was part of State policy- and proving safe passage to drug runners ahs always been one of them,- viz Air America of the Vietnam days. This has always been in conflict with the goals of the DEA, whose task was to stop drug smuggling. The CIA would win in cases of, “ National Interest “, as in the case of Pakistan, and turn a blind eye to their drug smuggling.
We are told Bhutto was savior of democracy, was the Western world’s last hope and now the region and the West’s hopes are now plunged into darkness and despair.
The reality is harsher- Bhutto had done nothing to repeal the Sharia laws brought in by her predecessor general Zia ul Haq, nor for that matter was anything done by Sharif. The target was simply Hindus, other minorities, and Hindustan, and India was targeted for terror termed as ‘low intensity warfare’ – what a lovely sanitized term. Under that cover every generation of Pakistani leader, sought to exploit their people and retain their comforts..
The problem now is that the very dogs they raised to attack democracies like India, have morphed into hyenas, out of control.
The problem now is that while they may make noises of secularity and democracy, in reality they are all devout Islamicists and will, when the crunch comes , as it has come, support their neo-religious cause, and seek to bring the rest of the world under the shadow of their version of Islam, rather than create a society that espouses :liberty equality and fraternity.
Ravi Chaudhary
