We, the liberals or progressives, particularly working in NGOs, earnestly feel that we represent the aspirations of the people who will happily follow our directions and thoughts. The same has happened with the protest demonstration in favour of the amendment to the blasphemy laws in Islamabad which turned out to be a tiny demonstration in comparison with the protest rallies and strike calls from the fundamentalists. I think that the main flaw in our strategy is that we do not mobilize ourselves properly or do not want to work with other groups within civil society. This is a common trend among NGOs who are mainly project oriented. They wanted to remain within the boundaries of their particular project and think that the whole of civil society should rally around their methods of changing society.
I am not criticising them as being NGOs nor do I intend to do so. However, sometimes their way of working becomes a mockery for a good cause. Simply sending emails to like minded people will never yield the required results. Those people or organizations that have sympathy with our work, like for example, the campaign against the blasphemy laws, when they see that we cannot motivate the necessary number of people or our message was not properly sent to the people, they will prefer to keep silent and may even jump to other side of the fence. The example is typified by the opportunistic character of the government and the ministers. Even they do not want to say in sympathy with Taseer and Sherry when these people receive death threats from Mullahs in open and public debates.
In the case of the Islamabad protest against the blasphemy laws, the main factor was that no proper mobilization was done. The trade unions were not taken into confidence and for that matter neither were the professional bodies like organizations of lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, artists (including all fields of artists) and women (particularly women who are working in organizations of peasants and labourers) and social and minority organizations. It now looks as if more priority is being placed on taking credit by individuals working in the NGOs than obtaining the desired result.
The fundamentalists relied heavily on the students of the Madressas who were there to support their views. But the NGOs did not consider either catering to or mobilizing the students of regular educational institutions including universities and colleges. Obviously, without the support of these students, whose numbers are considerable, any movement cannot be successful. The student unions have been banned in Pakistan since the 1980s and there is no project to launch a movement for their restoration. While it is vital that the NGOs have the support of the students surprisingly there is no agenda by the NGOs to support them in their attempts to restore their unions.
We should not live in an abstract world believing that people will blindly follow us. We must realize that there are other forces who are much more important in the movement of change. The sending of emails and meetings with the like minded people are not and never will be sufficient for dealing with such important issues such as the blasphemy laws.
I think we should revisit our strategies. In addition to the project oriented issues we have to enlarge our scope on the other issues which matter. We should work strongly to mobilize society’s thinking in favour of the restoration of the student unions. A bill should be presented to parliament for the restoration of these unions. If they were to be reinstated this would encourage the secular forces to unite in order to engage the pro-establishment ideology and the fundamentalists in a strong and healthy debate. A new era will begin in body politics and the students will play a big role in uniting the forces that will play an important role in changing our society. New and vibrant thinking will eliminate the stagnation that has entered into Pakistan’s politics.
Baseer Naweed