Oct: The voice of the student community was effectively silenced when General Zia
imposed country-wide ban on their unions in colleges and universities. The
dictator had not forgotten the role students had played in the downfall of Ayub
Khan and the rise to popular leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was himself a
beneficiary of the mass agitation the Jamaat student wing, the IJT, had led in
unseating the PPP leader.
By isolating and excluding the largest section of the
educated population from mainstream social polity he not only deprived society
of its young blood, with its high ambition and ideals, but also closed the
training ground that traditionally prepared the leadership for the future. His
was a fearful rule for eleven barren, muted years when all that grew were weeds
and canker worms. When he had an elected prime minister removed from the scene
judicially the silence on the roads proclaimed the success of his demonic
strategy. The nation had been sapped of its vitality.
Before the
suppression of students participation in the affairs of the country the
essentially voluntary character of their engagement with national issues had
been vitiated by formation of student wings of political parties in institutions
of higher learning. These political wings divided the student community into
rival groups that turned campuses into battle grounds and greatly disturbed the
peace and serenity of the institutions which affected their educational careers.
The ban on unions further strengthened these surrogate student bodies and campus
life was corrupted by infusion of funds that political parties paid to the
leaders of these student wings. So just as depoliticisation of representative
institutions and the electoral process splintered the body politic into all
kinds of mutually antagonistic fissiparous groups, the ban on college and
university unions and their federations destroyed the student community's
voluntary character as a proactive participant in national life.
Deprived
of their rightful role in national life and the healthy activities associated
with it this massive body of our educated youth slumped into confusion, abject
conformism and loss of interest in public affairs. Intellectual decay in
academia resulted in students adopting orthodox modes of thinking as some others
turned to seek solace in drugs. Over the years gross neglect of education and
the failure of the educational system had resulted in the mushroom growth of
expensive private institutions to which the rich started sending their children
abandoning government schools and colleges where the rich and the poor used to
study together. In the Dennys High School, Rawalpindi, where I studied, my class
fellows were sons of the rich Bohri community of Adamji Road as well as wards of
the high bureaucracy and military brass. Not any more. For the very poor now
emerged the foreign funded madressahs where all that the children in white skull
caps were taught was some sectarian version of religion. The resultant product
of these institutions having had no exposure to civil society struggles for
social or economic justice are a lost wayward lot who cannot agitate even for
their own rights collectively. Jobless youth can be seen wandering from office
to office handing applications but cannot unite as a body to make their demands
heard. Sons and daughters of the rich meanwhile strum guitars and make a fool of
themselves before hand-waving audiences who have nothing better to do. Where in
the West pop art forms are a rebellion against the establishment, here they are
just fashion. The clever among them in the footsteps of their time-serving
elders have formed groups like 'Lovers of Asif Zardari' and 'Lovers of
Musharraf'. This is the total content of their political awareness.
As a
result human rights groups that have emerged on the social scene to fill the
void created by public apathy are too few and far between. They agitate causes
in scattered groups. Common people have shrunk back as they are too wary of
confrontations that have not brought any betterment in their lot. The young hot
blood of the students community that used to be in the forefront of public
agitations is not there to amplify the voice of protest and contribute its
educated support to the cause. The forces of oppression have become stronger in
the face of weak public responses and politicians are being taunted for not
being able to bring out crowds on the road. Coming from the government and the
judiciary this challenge to politicians means that public protests, processions
and agitation on the roads which the establishment never fails to obstruct are
accepted as justified political activity.
The vocal sections of the civil
society mostly comprise old gentlemen, retired people who can at best appear in
TV talk shows but their number is not enough to make protesting crowds sizably
respectable. The lawyers and the journalists and non-governmental organisations
with human rights groups are the only voluntary groups struggling against the
might of an establishment that is not impressed by the quality of the protest
but will only be convinced by quantity. There are not many sensitive and
socially responsible individuals like this young man Adnan Sattar who in support
of the lawyers' position on the presidential candidacy got a beating from the
police and sustained injuries during Saturday's violence in Islamabad. A highly
educated social scientist and a talented poet he had nothing to gain from it but
he just cannot sit and watch and be indifferent to the great and historic
struggle for peoples legitimate rule that some sections of civil society are
waging. He thinks he must stand up and be counted like the tiny bird in the
story (poet Harris Khalique keeps looking for occasions to tell) which was seen
bringing droplets of water in its beak to extinguish Nimrud's fire. When taunted
on the futility of the effort, the bird had queried: Oughtn't I be among those
who tried to put out the fire? - Dawn
