The writer is a Lahore-based lawyer and can be reached at saroop_ijaz@hotmail.com
This article was published in Pakistan's Daily Time, and is published here with the kind authorization of the author.
It does not take much for the native to attack his fellow natives, but it takes the development of consciousness to revolt against the coloniser. We had hoped that the ordeals of the past would have given impetuous to the growth of such democratic consciousness; apparently it has not
Recently, we saw one of the most extreme outbursts of emotions in recent Pakistani political history. With innuendos and explicit references to wives, daughters, rehabilitation, sexual proclivities and hair transplants, this has to be amongst the most intense ad hominem attacks that we have witnessed. The immediate reaction intuitively is to condemn such attacks while hanging our heads in shame and lamenting the state of affairs of our politicians. The hurling of abuse is considered by many to be a base attempt at displaying bravado. This reaction, though justifiable, is reductionist as it does not completely explain the precipitation of such an explosion. Especially if we bear in mind that the makers of these ad hominem attacks are ostensibly powerful, seasoned and astute politicians.
The Wretched of the Earth written by Frantz Fanon during the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule remains the most critical indictment of colonisation and imperialism. Frantz Fanon writes that the colonised man will first manifest the aggressiveness, which has been deposited in his bones, against his own people. This is the period when the ‘niggers’ beat each other up, and the police and magistrates do not know which way to turn when faced with the astonishing waves of crime in North Africa. While the settler or the policeman has the right to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native; for the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-à-vis his brother. Paulo Freire, interpreting Fanon in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, observes that it is possible that in this behaviour the natives are manifesting their duality, because the oppressor exists within their oppressed comrades; when they attack those comrades they are indirectly attacking the oppressor as well.
An example closer to home is the rise of the British Empire. The success of the British in the late 18th and early 19th century was largely facilitated by the disunity and at times the sheer hatred of the native towards his fellow natives. In the early 20th century, the allegations by two major political parties — Congress and the Muslim League — against each other were similar to the present day Pakistan, i.e. loyalty to the establishment (British). The attack on the British was almost always reasoned and logical, but when it came to the critique of the other party; it was practically no holds barred, with personal attacks in abundance.
