Nauman Sadiq
PTI chief Imran Khan and the PAT chief Tahirul Qadri are arguably at the driving seats of Pakistan now; where they'll lead this beleaguered South Asian country is, though, anybody's guess. And the scene of the powerful army being dragged into a confrontation between political powers does not seem pretty from Kathmandu.
So what is IK, so widely admired and more if not equally loathed, up to, after all? What is the source of his 'unscrupulous pragmatism' that has so badly threatened a democratically elected government? In this insightful piece written before the current 'revolution' started, Sadiq gives a crucial background as to how IK landed the country as well as himself in a difficult situation.
Imran Khan: A pragmatist par excellence
Rather than the Turkish establishment where Erdogan has clipped the wings of Kemalist generals, it appears that the Pakistani establishment is taking its cue from the Egyptian establishment. Egyptian army has massacred hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, handed down heavy sentences to hundreds more and imprisoned the entire leadership and thousands of MB supporters, yet the international community did nothing except making some symbolic gestures. This precedent has emboldened the establishment in Pakistan to act with impunity.
Before psycho-analyzing Imran Khan’s colorful personality and determining that where does PTI stands in the Pakistani political spectrum: whether it’s a center-left (liberal) or a center-right (conservative) party, let us first draw a distinction between politics and culture: a democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics while liberalism as a value-system falls in the category of culture.
When we say that Islam and democracy are incompatible, we make a category mistake as big as the Islamists’ misperception that democracy is un-Islamic. They too mix up democracy with liberalism. Here let me concede that there is some friction between liberalism as a culture and Islam as a religion. But democracy isn’t about religion or culture. It is simply a multi-party representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political parties, to ensure that it is voluntary. Thus, democracy and politics is about matters of governance and economics while culture is about the socio-moral values and the kind of social matrix that we, as individuals and families, want around us. There is some overlapping between politics and culture but as an heuristic principle this distinction holds true.
When I discuss the political pragmatism of PTI, the reader will further appreciate the fact that realpolitik is mostly about power and rarely about cultural matters. Let us admit at the outset that Imran Khan is an educated, well-informed, articulate and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate he is better informed than our local politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers won’t agree due to his strong anti-imperialism and the West-bashing demagoguery but I’ll try to explain. Like I said earlier that there is a difference between politics and culture; anti-imperialism is a political stance and liberalism is a cultural temperament. There is a theory called Reflective equilibrium. It states that our minds try to create a harmony between our different sets of beliefs and actions. If there is a divergence between our beliefs and actions, it leads to cognitive dissonance. To avoid this dissonance we try to attune our beliefs and ideology to bring them in conformity with our actions and vice versa.
Now if Imran Khan is a conservative-Islamist, his mind must be a psychological singularity. A playboy-cricketer turned politician who spent most of his youth in the West chasing famous celebrities all over the world, how could he be an Islamist or a conservative? How would his mind create a reflective equilibrium between his beliefs and his adulterous actions? It is just not possible for him to be an Islamist or a conservative. The only ideology that suits his temperament and past actions is the freewheeling liberalism. A clarification here is needed. When I say that he is not an Islamist, I mean that he is not a political Islamist and I am not questioning his personal faith as a Muslim. He seems like a secular Muslim.
