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On Extra-Judicial Killings, Un-reflexive Nationalism & Paranoia
What explains the silence of this country over the death of a young boy #HayatBaloch? Probably our collective consciousness and rational faculties have been clouded by the curse of non-reflexive nationalism.
What explains the silence of this country over the death of a young boy #HayatBaloch? Probably our collective consciousness and rational faculties have been clouded by the curse of non-reflexive nationalism.
Seventy-three years later, the promised homeland – just, peaceful, equal and pluralistic – that the founding father of the nation promised days before independence is nowhere in sight.
Amid nationalistic fervour that the country was engulfed in on its seventy-third independence day, our turbulent history calls for serious introspection. The promise of socio-economic development has been eclipsed long ago by perpetual financial and political crises.
It is not that apathy has set in, or that dissent among people is not loud and widespread. The growing voices showing discontent against state actions in Balochistan and recently mainstreamed Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) narrates an entirely different tale.
Both Baloch resentment and Pashtun Tahfuz Movement, jeered by the state as foreign conspiracies, show people’s disenchantment from the false promises the government had made.
James Baldwin explains this disillusionment in The American Dream and the American Negro: “It comes as a great shock … to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you…
It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and identity has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you.”
The political and economic elite, with the assistance of the praetorian regime, ballooned to militant non-reflexive nationalism, which throughout the 73 years created the cartography of enemies: both inside and outside the nation-state.
Voices of dissent were & are subjected to extreme violence, both physical & social other-ing by the force of nationalism. The non-reflexive nationalism believes that the enemies within due to conspiracies by the enemy outside ungratefully deny “politics of charity” by the centre.
The transfer of resources from the centre to the elites of the regions of dissent in packages such as Aghaz-e-Huqooq Balochistan, mainstreaming of the former tribal areas and China Pakistan Economic Corridor was heralded to usher in a new era of progress and contentment.
The deepening exploitative relations of centre and periphery, within the country, were placated by the jubilation over this transfer of charity, which only strengthened the structure of exploitation. The un-reflexive nationalism is keen on gagging media, the much-needed watchdog.
The ultra-nationalists silence any attempt that the press makes for challenging the negative impacts of nationalism on people’s psyche. Every criticism of the state’s actions and policies is condemned as a foreign conspiracy.
State’s unreasonable behaviour towards any criticism of its policies informs us that paranoia is inherent to the genetic makeup of any state. Paranoia is the fodder the state feeds on and gains energy from while perpetuating its desired ideology of un-reflexive nationalism.
