Let us begin with the good news. The separate electrates for Muslims and non-Muslims have been abolished. These were operative from 1979 and the elections of 1985, 1988, 1990, 1993 and 1997 were held under them. Their supporters said that they ensured that some non-Muslims would always be represented in the National Assembly. However, what happened in practice was that the non-Muslims got practically disenfranchised. They were spread out quite widely and their local member was almost always a Muslim. He did not depend upon their votes and could hardly annoy those whose votes he did depend upon. This made it possible for Christians to be accused of blasphemy in order to settle old scores with impunity. The accused Christians could not turn for relief to the local MNA and their Christian representative was far away and, in most cases, a man with no local influence at all. Even worse, in Sindh the non-Muslim representatives were Hindus while in the Punjab they were Christians. This meant that any Chiristians in Sindh and any Hindus in the Punjab had nobody to turn to. Moreover, the non-Muslims were generally in the government’s camp which meant that they never rocked the boat and any special pleading by them on behalf of the minorities was dismissed as biased vote-gathering rhetoric.
In short, the government has brought about a good change by deciding to undo the separate electorates. However, in addition to the separate electorates special seats should also be fixed for the non-Muslims because they are weak and vulnerable and do need additional protection at the moment. Similarly, women too need to be empowered and fixed seats for them should be increased. While it is true that, for the most part, women have to act as honorary men in politics, it cannot be denied that they do gain in prestige when they are in office. This is necessary to empower women at this time.
Now for the bad news. The government has deemed that the elected representatives should have a B.A---Why? Does the government think that a B.A is ipso facto, a better representative of the people than one who, like Abdus Sattar Edhi, has no formal degrees? Actually, there is a lot of middle class prejudice behind the idea of the B.A. For a very long time our professional, ‘educated’, middle classes (and upper classes) have been saying that the country is not fit for democracy because the people are uneducated. This is merely a form of contempt for the people which all upper classes have in all countries. In the medieval ages the European upper classes claimed to have blue blood and this, they further claimed, gave them the right to rule upon those who merely had red blood in their bodies. Now one cannot be so blunt and unscientific so other myths are invoked. In the officer corps of the armed forces the conventional wisdom is that the intelligence (IQ) of the officers is better than of the Other Ranks because of which they have the right to lead them. Among civilians the fashion is to make education the distinguishing criterion of assumed superiority. That this does not bear examination does not bother anybody because, after all, this is the most convenient formula for disenfranchising the common people and doing away with democracy.
The fact is that educated communities have never proved themselves to be any more sensitive to the poor or any less selfish about their class, national or collective interests than uneducated communities. Nazi Germany, for instance, was better educated than many other European countries yet the educated middle class supported Hitler’s worst excesses against Jews, gypsies and non-Nordic races. They would have kept supporting him, no matter whom he would have destroyed, had they not lost the war. In Pakistan the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs were the most educated community in the country yet their reaction to perceived injustice in Karachi was more violent than that of other communities. In the United States, which has universal schooling and whose elite has many university professors on its advisory panels, the reaction to terrorism on September 11 was more violent than less educated countries. Indeed, if one probes deeply enough, one finds that educated elites in the name of religion, ideology, nationalism and honour are responssible for starting more wars of aggression in human history than non-literate peasant or hunter-gatherer kind of societies. Aggression is a product of power and education has not---not so far at least---prevented the powerful from exploiting the less powerful by one means or the other.
This does not mean that education is not necessary in the modern world. Now that others are educated, it is an empowering device. It also creates a world view which is based on individualism and the necessity of upward social mobility through employment. This ensures the disappearance of the large family which means less population growth. It also leads to industrialization and modernization because a literate work force can read labels and operate machines more competently. It also leads to less subservience of the common people to their social superiors which will result, eventually let us hope, into the creation of a democratic culture.
All these things are welcome but none of them mean that the educated will be morally superior and really more civilized (if civilization is defined as the growth in humanitarian feelings) than our uneducated villagers. Indeed, the likelihood is that our educated, highly mobile, very busy society will leave babies to child minders and old grandparents to old people’s houses and turn cruel and selfish as Western societies are. However, if they adopt a Western worldview they will not indulge in honour killing and will no longer persecute lovers. This will certainly improve the lives of women. This will be a plus point but it will be at the cost of certain minus points which have been mentioned earlier.
In any case, despite its costs, I am all for education. But so long as our governments do not educate everybody---which they should have done a long time back---they do not have the right to discriminate between citizens on the basis of education. It is possible that someone like Edhi can represent the common people better than a Ph.D living in a city. Thus, laying down the condition of the possession of a B.A degree will hurt genuine representatives in the backward areas, such as the Tribal Areas, which should be encouraged to join the rest of the country and not banned from participation.
Besides these two major points, one wonders whether the present experiment will not be an exercise in Junejonization. Mr. Junejo, whom General Zia ul Haq picked out to give a civilian face to his military rule in 1995, was actually an upright man who was not ready to be subservient to the military. When the Ojhri Camp disaster occurred, so it is said, he wanted to punish the military for it. Moreover, he wanted a foreign policy of his own rather than one run by the army. Thus, not being a mere puppet, he was sacked unceremoniously.
Benazir Bhutto accepted a degree of Junejonization in 1988. Ghulam Ishaq Khan as president and General Aslam Beg as army chief ensured that the foreign policy, which in those days meant meddling in Afghanistan and making a nuclear bomb, remained firmly in the hands of the army. All politicians accepted Junejonization in some form or the other. The only one who did not was Z.A. Bhutto but he did not make good use of his power. He became an arrogant dictator no better, and in some things worse, than Ayub, Yahya and Zia ul Haq who were military dictators. Nawaz Sharif too was about to get rid of Junejonization but he sought to use Islam to arrogate excessive powers. Both Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were removed by the military which has experimented with Junejonization in many forms.
The problem with the coming elections is that they will probably he another exercise in Junejonization. If both the PML and the PPP support the exercise they will get governance but not power. To keep the governance they will suppress dissent in the civil society and we will not get a democratic culture which means Junejonization will continue. Moreover, the pulitical parties might have to legitimize a military council of some sort in order to get the governance they covet. This will be the end of democracy and the permanence of the institution of Junejonization. Under the circumstances, then, one cannot but be pessimistic about the return of ‘democracy’ in Pakistan.