The English like to fondly nurture the illusion that they ‘play fair’. They don’t, of course, not now nor have they ever; any more than any other nation when it thinks its interests outweigh whatever moral imperatives might be skulking on the sidelines. Despite which, there is a level inside many of us Children of Albion who wander far from its shores, the occasional twinge of guilt if we sense that we might be seen as not having ‘played a straight bat’. Such a twinge has prodded me this week Dear Reader and with it the admission that I might not have been giving a square deal to the country that has been my home these last few years.
Looking back over the last ten months of writing these occasional pieces I realised that I had more bad to say than I did good about Pakistan. And quite right too, you may think. There is a lot wrong that needs righting. But there is also a lot right that rarely gets acknowledged, and is lost in the rolling tide of criticism that the likes of myself can produce at the drop of a hat. So, engaging my personal Spirit of Fair Play…
You are reading this piece and it is not censored nor I in jail or thrown out of the country because Pakistan has a press and media sector that is, for the most part, free. There are constraints, but they are not all-pervasive. Does the government manipulate the media, put pressure on it from time to time, and even occasionally make life uncomfortable for those who write or speak against it? Yes, they do. But you do not open your newspaper in the morning in the expectation of seeing blank areas where the blue pencil of the censor has expunged both opinion and record. You open the papers to find a wide and diverse set of reports and ideas from across every strata of the nation. Spend a moment comparing that to what you saw when you opened a paper under the Zia regime.
Turn on your television or radio and experience a similar diversity — some of the product you can choose from is admittedly from the bottom end of the landa bazaar, but hey, its early days and things can only get better.
Want to send an email? You can do that from practically anywhere in the country, and when you have sent your mail you can surf the Internet, going wherever you want and saying whatever you like to anybody who wants to listen. Try doing that in Saudi Arabia, or China or any of the other states that attempt to limit access to this most modern and interactive of media.
Not every policeman or bureaucrat is corrupt, nor every single politician is determined to swindle the common man out of every paisa he has. There is not a viper in the heart of every family whispering that burning the newest daughter-in-law to death is a good idea. Panchayats regularly — and generally reliably — arbitrate and resolve innumerable disputes, and are not all handing down dark judgments condemning innocent women to rape and worse. Property developers are not all willfully constructing buildings that are going to collapse at the first sign of seismic activity. Educationalists and teachers are not striving to turn the nation’s children into a generation of dunces. The government does not always get everything wrong. Not all religious leaders are calling for the immolation of those who might disagree with them.
It is almost childishly easy to take a swipe at — and hit — a sensitive part of just about every civil body, socio-cultural practice and institution there is in Pakistan. The environment in which commentators and critics write and comment is, as the military would say ‘target rich’. And yet…the nation is not falling apart at the seams. Life is not unraveling into utter chaos, anarchy does not rule. All of those things are possible, and might just happen, but they are not happening right now despite what you might think, read, see or hear.
Fair play duly rendered, the routine flaying of the usual suspects will re-commence imminently.
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