SP Arsala Saleem is, strangely enough, being supported by fellow PSP officers for her salute to the Pakistan royalty. There is nothing wrong in the salute, they argue. This shamelessness is ruthlessly- almost violently- painful to this author and to the many who seek to one day see a Pakistan that is free from all of its sins of today.
The salute is a big problem because it highlights the attitude prevalent in the society. Moreover, it displays, and indeed quite brashly so, the normalisation of this obtrusive social system we have come to term as our society. People who argue in its support insist that those who criticise have little understanding of how things work. And this, in all honesty, is the problem at the core. We as a nation have come to accept a faulted reality as our means to survive. It’s fine so long as the lives don’t get disrupted. It’s fine so long as the lazy Pakistani stays as they are.
High Court Advocate Amna Ali has sent a legal notice to Arsala Saleem. She asked to justify her action. Her supporters, yet again officers from the bureaucracy, have taken to social media forums to term this as a character assassination. These individuals have dedicated statuses that sing high praise on her character and professional career. Such writeups are dumbfounding to say the least. How these individuals have equated the outcry to character assassination escapes most minds. The critique is not of her but the social norm that she has been trained to embrace. Her support by her seniors and fellow uniformed officers is exactly the problem that needs our attention. The hierarchy in our bureaucracy has failed to understand that its duties towards the Pakistan populace precedes the ridiculous dedication they have to serving politicians. Maybe, they need to teach this in the CSS curriculum, the same examinations that are notorious for passing only 2% of those who take them. It is quite strange to see how such CSS passed officers are too afraid (and selfish) to touch this system. This says a lot about the recruitment process and why the examinations fail to induct graduates from some of the leading universities of the country. Maybe the system does not want disrupting minds in the first place. All they want are robots; soldiers who can simply follow orders of the royal families.
The princess on return has tweeted that the officer saluted the ‘daughter of the nation’ not the designation. Funny how MNS sees herself as the daughter of the nation, and what see means by designation, because technically she should have none. Sad how there are so many devotees who actually see her as a role-model like “daughter of the nation”.
And then there are the ‘educated’ who insist that some form of corruption is alright. Those, who insist that we, as a society, must allow the sharks to tear our national fabric apart so long as they, the bottom feeders get to eat scraps that fall off. These selfish people unfortunately have more power and influence than those who seek any form of change. Unfortunately, so long as these power dynamics remain, the country we all love to love, shall remain the absolute disaster it is today. Maybe, the Kaptaan was right after all: the country does need a revolution- nothing less can work.
The royal family is shell-shocked. The princess come out of the JIT interrogations to give threatening press-conferences. They come in BMWs and protocols that bleed tax payer money and complain how they, them highnesses, were questioned for 3 hours at length. And yet, there are so many out there who share their grief and see them as martyrs, not less. As if, giving in to the law of the state is a form of vilification. As if, being uncorrupt is too much to ask.
Many of us know this tale already. They know how this is all wrong and that the princes and the princesses deserve no special treatment but, we still let everything happen. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that this seems not worth caring about. Those who sit at homes marveling the corrupt for the situation they are in deserve the blame for the terrible future they have guaranteed to their children. Much like Brexit, the generation before us who still finds solace in the Sharifs and the Bhuttos, has deprived us from a sane reality for the future. We, this generation, will have to fight because the generation before us is too stubborn to see the clarity of the situation. Because, they still insist that saluting VIPs is completely and wholly acceptable.
The writer is working as a health economist in a think-tank based in Islamabad.
@makahsan
