At Shinar, Noah’s sons and daughters build a great and powerful city. Beautiful squares and grand mansions fill the city. Armies subdue the world beyond its walls and caravans bring untold treasures. But peace, beauty and wealth are not enough. More than anything, Noah’s descendants want to break free from the shackles of the earth and touch the face of God.
Ten thousand hands join together as one and under their care a Tower is built. It ascends higher and higher until heaven and earth are one for its occupants. But their arrogance offends God. In His wrath, He tears down the Tower, scatters the people across the face of the Earth, and shatters their language into fragments of a greater whole. That ruin becomes known as Babel.
This is how the Book of Genesis explains why humanity speaks different languages. It is also an apt account of what ails Pakistan.
If anything can be deduced from the current state of politics, it is that we no longer speak the same language. We are not connected by the same past, we do not face the same present and we cannot imagine the same future: we no longer share the same reality.
A majority considers this government to be illegitimate; the other side questions the existence of the majority itself. One side thinks Khan’s absence from power is the biggest threat to the country; the other thinks that he himself is the threat. Dissent is crushed as if it were an insurgency, while dissidents believe they are opposed to betrayal of the most serious kind.
This binary situation is unsustainable. But the worst thing is the cancer that beats at the heart of these disputes: our conception of the truth has been marinating in the water of politics for too long.
Part of the problem is that we once again think of democracy as an end in itself. It is not. It is a means to self-govern, safeguard human dignity, achieve equality, promote justice, promote social well-being, protect rights, drive progress, uncover the truth and hold the powerful accountable.
When we see it as an end, we see our right to argue and disagree as the end itself. We resist being told that our dissent may not only be unproductive, but also harm us in the long term. We provide fake accounts and traffic in misinformation because we believe it paves the way to a better future.
At the other end of the spectrum, we see the flaws in our society and believe they are inherent flaws in democracy. When democracy is invariably not enough to generate progress on its own, we become disillusioned and hold our fists over our tongues. We suppress dissent because we believe it will tear us apart. We attack those who oppose us because we are blind to the flaws in our thinking.
A jaded lawyer once told this author that when trying to resolve disputes between two parties, “you must first identify the last point of convergence in their belief systems and work from there.”
The problem here is that there remains no identifiable point of convergence between Khan and the powers that be. The deeper the two sides dig into their respective trenches, the more irreconcilable their versions of the truth become. Words like “justice,” “betrayal,” and “stability” have been stripped of their shared meaning and repurposed for tribal warfare.
The result now is a society whose two halves can only talk to each other. In a very real sense, we live in the ruins of Babel.
But this does not have to be the story of Pakistan in its last laborious breaths. We have the ability to undo the damage that has been done to the national psyche. And it begins, as it usually does, with a question. Both parties must ask themselves: will victory over the other party produce the desired end result?
The only sensible answer to this is a resounding no.
Both sides have fundamentally misaligned their efforts with their respective victory scenarios. Khan needed to gain freedom of action by taking advantage of narrative control. The Other needed to gain narrative control by leveraging its control of state institutions. By contrast, Khan’s efforts resulted in greater narrative dominance with diminishing freedom of action, while the Other’s approach expanded his control of state institutions at the expense of narrative control.
In simpler words, their strategies got them what they already had in sufficient quantity, while at the same time taking them away from their true objectives.
Second, both sides have framed the conflict in ways that make the post-conflict world undesirable for them. Consider.
The PTI’s organizational structure may end up being dismantled, but that victory will not be sustained. Myths grow stronger when they are suppressed, and dissent will always raise its head and snap its jaws at the hand that seeks to control it. If you force it down today, it will appear tomorrow. If not under a green and red banner, then under a black one. And if not, then not under any flag, but from everywhere, at the same time. An endless, self-perpetuating cycle of chaos and forceful repression, with each giving birth to the other until there is no way out.
The PTI’s “victory” is equally illusory. Suppose the party gains control of the state, dismantles its adversaries, and claims the mantle of power. So what? In the winter of 1998, Nawaz Sharif believed he was king of all he saw. That momentary triumph bred resentment, which festered until Sharif’s turn in the spotlight was brutally curtailed.
More dangerous for the political system in general is the prospect of politicization of state institutions. If the institutional high command fractures along partisan lines, the institution’s ability to perform its most fundamental duties will disintegrate.
Consider the advice offered to the PTI. One side suggests that the situation will be resolved when there is a “return to the barracks.” The other meekly suggests that the PTI should learn to organize itself more effectively. The problem with the first is that withdrawal is not an option. Meanwhile, the PTI cannot appreciably “better organize” itself while its freedom of action remains so completely restricted.
If both sides were rational, they would conclude that continuing the conflict is worthless, since winning in this narrow context is the same as losing in a broader sense. The act of collaborating, then, is not the same as relying on idealism; is to rely on the cold, undeniable logic of game theory.
If Babel fell because its builders forgot their limits, Pakistan risks ruin because its architects refuse to see theirs. There are no winners in a zero-sum game, only mutual losers sifting through the rubble.
The writer is a law student at King’s College London. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of PakGazette.tv.
Originally published in The News
