Pakistan’s 2018 elections threw up some crucial, and interesting, points to surface. One column won’t suffice to cover them all. One by one would suit. So here is the first one, this week.
Why didn’t ‘religious’ parties make any decent performance in these elections? That is to put it very modestly, otherwise the performance was pitiful.
Some analysts are plainly dismissive of these parties. Some exhibit a long held tendentious approach towards Islamists. But some are serious, and thoughtful. In these serious discussions, and analytical columns, there is an overall sense of sadness, and anguish over the repeated failure of these parties. My interest is in that sober and pensive criticism of ‘religious’ parties, not in the tempestuous censure.
There is a need to understand these parties with a touch of seriousness. Reasons for this are plain. Like them or not, Islamists represent a genuine part of our society. Their potential to influence Muslim societies is a matter of fact. They have a human resource good enough to contribute positively to our politics, economy, and over all growth of the society. No matter how many times they fail in elections, their role in politics and society is not going to vanish. It doesn’t matter if you agree with any political ideology or not, like any leadership or not, trust a party or not; what matters is the presence and potential of a political force. Hence a need to seriously engage with the subject.
My understanding of this problem begins with the very nomenclature. Since media uses this attachment of religious for parties like Jam’at-e-Islami, it becomes a sort of compulsion to stick to it, for the purpose of identification. Otherwise I would prefer to name the party, rather than use this adjective. (Even that loose categorization of Right, Left and Centre doesn’t fit the bill.) This adjective is not just insufficient, but disastrously misleading. A party like JI is not ‘religious’ in the way the some distant observers understands. There is more to it, and different to it, than this one-word appendage carries. In any serious analysis, such adjectives is not good lens to focus. This lens deforms the object.
Conversely, when these parties assume themselves as religious it’s even more dangerous. In fact it is here that the failure of such parties can largely be understood. If a particular party earns the title – religious – by the very logic of it, it imagines itself as reverent, and divine. The extension of this logic makes its competitors irreverent and unfaithful. Put it simply, parties in MMA are sacred and holy. And parties like ML, PPP, and PTI are profane, and impious.
My central point that explains to me the electoral failure of these parties, particularly JI, is precisely this. They don’t look at the Muslim society as its matrix for politics. They rather are motivated, and guided, by a deep exclusionary mindset. They look at the society as a lot deviant and depraved. No doubt parties like JI are well wishers of the Muslim society of Pakistan, but this relationship operates in an atmosphere of psychological denial. There is a fundamental estrangement between the mind of Jam’at, and the larger societal mind. In a mathematical sense if Jam’at has to win an election, the society has to first undergo a massive transformation. Nothing wrong with that if JI can pull off such a miracle. But like it or not, politics, more so elections, is not about this. To cut it short, JI wants to win election on earth by fighting it on Mars. They will only get what they finally get.
Remember what Syed Maududi once said. After a similar experience when someone asked him why JI doesn’t become popular ( Awami) like others, his answer reflected the paradox sitting at the core of JI as an ideological party aiming to get into the seat of power through elections. Syed Maududi declined the temptation to stoop to the level of popular tastes and likings. He averred that people need to lift themselves up to a level where they can understand Jam’at and be its supporters. This is fundamentally an ideological, intellectual, and principled response to a problem that is neither about ideology, nor principle.
Though participatory from the very beginning, in terms of elections, JI has a conditional relationship with the society. This makes it unfit for contesting elections. It’s not undermining Jama’at. It is actually understanding where they get it wrong, and get a drubbing. In elections world over parties put themselves to test before their people. Here it a reverse of sorts. Parties like JI put the society to test employing ideological tools as a yardstick. After the failure blame comes to the people for not being good enough to choose right people, rather than to the party for having failed to pass the people’s test. A self justifying evaluation, with a halo of righteousness, reduces the entire thing to a judgmental rhetoric that aktharuhum la Yaqilun – most of them are imprudent.
Instead of enumerating ten different reasons for their failure in elections, I would leave it at this. These parties, particularly JI, need to re-explore the character of their organisation, and the demands of power politics. Right now there is a sharp mismatch. Either be a political party, or quit elections.
Tailpiece: Politics of a country can be constructively informed even without participating in elections. No need even to have a frontline, proxy party to contest elections.