A Youth Driven Social Revolution in Pakistan?

Daily Times

The sudden rise of the social movement rejects the conventional analysis that the youth is depoliticised and mainly interested in advancing their careers. What we are witnessing in Pakistan these days is a new social movement that is remarkably different from the ones launched against dictators in the past. It is not being driven as much by the old-fashioned, deal-making power elites as it is by strong popular sentiment among the Pakistani youth inside and outside the country. What is this popular sentiment, and why are the Pakistani youth at the centre of it? What explains the rise of this new social movement? What are its aims, and its chances of success?


It is heartening that while the power-elites were still debating how the imposition of martial law in the country would hurt them or create fresh opportunities of cooptation, college and university students along with young media and legal professionals instantly realised the enormity of the act of trashing the constitution and throwing the vast majority of judges of the superior judiciary out of the system.


It is perhaps for the first time in the political history of the country that legal and constitutional issues, hitherto a domain of the expert, have entered into the popular imagination with a powerful reminder that what happens in the superior judiciary is a matter of public concern. The unfolding of political events since March and the manner in which the media presented and debated the question of independence of the judiciary on the one hand, and the efforts of the executive to subvert it, brought into sharp relief the value of rule of law, dissent and the larger question of representation in the structures of power.


The judicial crisis and the lawyers’ movement captured the attention of all sections of society. But more than any other, the youth became interested in the identity of their state — who controls and runs it and for what purposes — and learnt their first lesson in politics. The lesson was that one or few individuals associated with powerful formal institutions and informal social structures have absolute control over the state and do not care about public interests.


In the past, ruling elites got away with acts of corruption, martial laws and emergencies because they could easily manage and control society through a co-opted intermediating class comprising landowners, caste and tribal chiefs and other socially influential figures with an inherent stake in the elitist power structure, often directed and manipulated by the men in uniform. Their recent moves against the constitution and the judiciary are based on the old assumptions about society. Their reading of the changes that have occurred on a global, regional and domestic level does not seem realistic.


[..]This is not likely to end even if the presently dysfunctional regime of General Musharraf takes immediate remedial actions, like holding elections or lifting the state of emergency. The focus of the struggle is the constitution and an independent judiciary, including reinstatement of judges axed by the martial law, and redefinition of the role of the military in Pakistani politics. This is bound to happen, but the when and how is yet to be seen.


Signs of the demise of perhaps the last martial law are everywhere. Defiance is growing, and is taking new and innovative forms. And, there is close networking among civil society groups and resistance is being aided by technology.


The primitive, elite-led state faces a serious challenge from a very modern civil society. It would not be difficult to foretell the winner.