Lament for the Dead

NOVEMBER 2001 - Whoever said that crime does not pay obviously hadn’t encountered Pakistan, where not only does crime pay, but pays every time. It is the most reliable industrial undertaking this nation has and it flourishes just as well in good times and bad times, summer or winter and on weekdays and holidays. In fact crime is a flourishing business at all times, simply because there are so many opportunities to practice this art craft.

The latest massacre of poor and innocent Christians in Bahawalpur as they prayed on a Sunday invoking the Lord’s name, should come as no surprise to a nation that has lost the capacity to feel for anything. The death of so many people is of little or no consequence particularly since they were Christians who in any event, like all the minorities that scurry about here, are perfectly expendable. The Christians are a particularly non-violent people – at least the variety that is found here. Largely poor and deprived and dark coloured – a positive disadvantage in a country which is extremely racist and partial to the white colour (see marriage ads if you are in doubt), they have for ages been the city scavengers, sweeping, cleaning and carrying our refuse, tasks that the well-anointed and holier than thou Muslims would not even dream of doing even in a macabre nightmare. Being thus sweepers and consigned to the lowest rung of the caste and class ladder that thrives here, their misfortunes are of little importance in the larger scheme of things. The clever argument advocated here is usually built along the lines that in a country where Sunnis are not safe, and they form the brute majority, what chances do lower-placed minorities have? In fact, we all know that for quite sometime now, there has been an unofficial open season on Shia doctors in Karachi particularly, where the number is fast reaching the coveted hundred mark. The message is very specific. If you are a doctor and are keen to practice in Pakistan’s largest urban center and unfortunately happen to be a Shia – a big no, no at all times, then your chances of survival are just about the same as those of a snowball in hell.

Of course we are so good with the messages of concern and well being. As soon as some of the country’s unfortunates are bumped off, here or there, the government’s do gooders spring into action almost as if galvanized by some strong and primal force. Out pour the words of solace that carry as much solace as American strategy in Afghanistan carries sense. The Chief Executive is shocked and dismayed and everyone down the pecking order echoes the noble sentiments. The Governor of the Punjab in whose great province this act was carried out with meticulous and calm planning, is deeply shocked and grieved, both at the same time please note. It is a wonder he is still walking. He dutifully rushes off to the concerned site except that no one is really concerned. It is just the ritual that has to be enacted. There, amidst tight security – remember this is not a safe area since it is a church and people can be shot while they are praying inside, he goes through the motions looking somber, serious and solemn if all three things are possible at the same time – they are. Our functionaries have perfected the public masks they wear at the appropriate occasion. Solicitous enquiries are made and some sort of insulting cash rewards are proudly announced for those who were not gunned down. The government makes a big thing of this because in their books where there is no money anyway, payments for its dead citizens is an act of supreme nobility and a hundred thousand rupees over one poor, surely unemployed Christian, is a big thing. This time since so many got bumped off, the treasury is not going to be too happy about doling out the cash, which in any event as most people have learnt here, can take a very long time. The Governor is not the only one who is shaken to the core. The Minor Minister for Minorities has also made the pilgrimage to the site of the massacre and made the appropriate noises. There is little else he can do. The good Col. Tressler might recall that his father would have shaken a few heads and knocked a few punches before walking off, but that was another generation and another time. This is the century of the barbarians.

While at Bahawalpur, and obviously it is not a fun city particularly when so many unhappy Christians are wailing and moaning, the government’s chosen representatives make the usual announcements like reading out the results of a three-legged race. The culprits will be brought to book – except there is no book here, the guilty will be punished, the lives of innocent people will be protected (we will take a 3 minute recess for laughing at this point) and no efforts will be spared to find the people who carried out this ‘heinous’ crime – a great favourite with the authorities this heinous word, and the clincher, that they will be given exemplary punishments. More clucking noises follow, more nods of sympathy although by now the functionaries may well be mentally hundreds of miles away, to another massacre, another inauguration, another seminar, another swearing-in, another cabinet meeting, another inter-provincial waste of time conference and so on. In any event, they showed up, announced the sweepstakes and want to get the hell out of Bahawalpur. And they do, sirens wailing, cops sweeping aside all who dare get in the way of the ‘Lat Sahib ki Sawari’ – the procession of the masters and before long, clouds of Bahawalpur’s best dust settles down on the lives of the miserable poor whose only crime was that their families went out to pray on a Sunday just as the Good Lord asked them to.

The government enquiry soon falls into a crack, though ravine would be a better word. There, it soon mingles with the hundreds and thousands of other enquiries, and like the last scene from Orwell’s ‘The Animal Farm’ where the animals can no longer be distinguished from the men, the recent enquiry soon blends into the garbage of broken promises. The news of the massacre which retained the front pages for a day or two, is quickly relegated to the inner pages and is then swallowed up by more calamitous mishaps that greet the citizens of this strange country every morning. Its fall from memory is quite like the top of the pops charts except that no one is singing here, only crying. For every mishap that happens here, all who participate in it play out the same ritual – we cannot say involved, because no one is really involved. Day after day, crimes are committed against every section of our violence-infested society yet our immunity to feel and raise our voices against these atrocities has risen at alarming proportions. Human life has no value here because there is so much of it about, poor, miserable and beaten. A few dozens die in tractor-bus head ons, railway carriages that cannot stay on the rails kill more, gas cylinders that explode, trucks of lethal chemicals that decide to erupt in the middle of the most congested areas, or the armies of killers on the loose carrying out agendas that only demons can conjure – Shias, Sunnis, Christians, Ahmedis, Hindus all are fair targets and all are killed for reasons that turn the stomach. The great thing is no one ever gets caught, no one ever gets punished. Crime pays. Just queue up.