Hanh mein Musa, hanh Firaun

What happened on the night of Thursday, October 18 is a tragedy on so many levels, both personal and social. (I mean the bomb blast, not The Return of The Queen to The Misty Mountains.)

Without trying to take anything away from the enormity or horror of the attack, it is not, however, a tragedy on a political level. If anything, this should end up strengthening the resolve of people who want to see democracy in Pakistan (or at the very least, some kind of major socio-political change). And, in the context of the shaky uncapitalised movement to restore democracy, this is surely a good thing.

One of the biggest fallouts of the perpetual cycle of military rule (and the consequent strengthening of Talibanesque groups) is that the people have become so fed up with the current status quo that Pious, Sincere, Crusading Champeens of Democratic Principles like H.M. Mohtarma Benazir Zardari, née Buttho, assume the status of demigods, further strengthening their respective cults of politico-celebrityhood.

If Pakistanis had been given ten commandments by the Almighty, might not the eleventh have been:

Thou Shalt Elect To The Nation’s Highest Office Any and All Descendants of Pir Szab† of Garhi Khuda Baksh For The Next Seventeen Generations Or Until They Adopt Foreign Nationality and Give Up Their Pakistani Citizenship.

†Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

As Her Majesty is the sitting gaddi-nasheen of the House of Bhutto, all must vote for Mohtarma. And then all must vote for her children and, after that (why not?) even any children that Viqar-ul-Mulk Asif Ali Bhutto, né Zardari, sires from future spouses. Man, this selection of election choices just became so damn easy.

In the overall scheme of things, the election of any one of the usual suspects at this stage seems to be the only way to bring us back to a state of democracy. And if, by some quirk of fate, democracy is allowed to continue unhindered for ten or twenty or thirty years, there is a glimmer of a hope that we might actually end up with visionary leaders and become transfomed into citizens of a truly democratic nation with liberty and (fingers crossed) justice for all. Without going into the need for us to develop our own set of guiding political principles and methods of statecraft (rather than trying to apply foreign standards of socio-political behaviour – standards which were developed over centuries in the Occident by Occidental thinkers and writers and statesmen for the Occident) that is a consummation devoutly to be wished, no?

I just hope (which, would you believe, yet springs eternal) that we can keep in perspective the character and track record of political *leaders* who purport to have the interest of the people (and only the interest of the people) at heart – and, at the very least, hold them to higher (much much higher) standards of moral behaviour than they have displayed thus far; that is the key to sustainable democracy, not the prostrating of ourselves before the modern version of feudal lords and ladies who come to us in the guise of heroic national saviours.

Meanwhile, hundreds of budding poets laureate are rumoured to be slaving away, in candlelit hovels, penning chansons de geste in Her Majesty’s shaan.