Citizenship Rights for a Better Future

The issue of rights is not alien to any human society. In 1948, the rights of individuals around the world were proclaimed in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). This proclamation morally binds all member nations of the United Nations to protect the rights of "all" human beings.

In democratic societies, the right to vote conventionally remains one the defining rights of a citizen. Besides the voting right, people need to have some substantive citizenship rights consisting of civil, political, and social rights. The notion of civil rights is linked closely to the liberal notion of individual freedom that assumes that the state should neither limit individual liberty unreasonably nor should it fail to underwrite and protect the same. The notion of political rights includes the right to participate in the government through some form of democracy. Finally, the notion of social rights recognizes that citizens have a right to a certain standard of economic and social well-being. British scholar T. H. Marshall suggests that the civil, political, and social citizenship rights evolved, in the British context, with the development of the English state from the liberal state of the eighteenth century to the liberal democratic state of the nineteenth century to the social democratic welfare state of the twentieth century.

Citizenship rights are not uniformly granted in any part of the world. This is also true for the Western democracies where the states discursively recognize the need for equal and universal citizenship rights. De facto citizenship actually excludes certain groups from the benefits that de jure citizenship brings. Social groups therefore need to imagine, claim, and struggle for citizenship rights. A progressive society, however, needs to focus on both the procedural and distributive aspects of social justice, since the recognition and implementation of citizenship rights is only the first step toward attaining distributive social justice.

In Western Europe, the social rights of citizens were protected by the welfare state that emerged in response to the inegalitarian tendencies of capitalism. In Eastern Europe, in contrast, a host of social rights were provided by centralized dictatorial regimes which also curtailed various civil and political rights. The struggles of common people in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe (both Eastern and Western blocs) suggests that people become alienated if and when their civil, political, or social rights were violated.

In Pakistan, the state plays a very significant part in the everyday lives of its citizens. Regardless of the guarantees that the Constitution of Pakistan gives, the language of rights has little "real" value, since the state institutions themselves do not respect the rule of law, particularly when it comes to the common people. Why is this so? A major reason lies in the colonial legacy of the Pakistani state. The British established an autocracy in colonial India in which coercion outweighed persuasion. Ironically, this state was fundamentally different from the one that evolved in England where persuasion outweighed coercion.

The autocracy established in colonial India is alive and well in contemporary Pakistan. It has become rather a ruthless and chaotic autocracy where the feudal lords, urban-based elite, and bureaucracy (particularly the army) have taken refuge in the dominant ideology and the perceived threat to national security to quell dissent and resistance. Moreover, too much power in the hands of the corrupt and unresponsive ruling elite (supported by the rule of danda and monopoly over the means of violence), an unjust system for the distribution of resources, poor economic performance, conspicuous consumption, a very high rate of population growth, and an overall lack of appreciation of nonviolent means of resolving domestic and international conflicts has created enormous difficulties for the evolution of society that recognizes and values its rights and duties.

The people of Pakistan need to protect their citizenship rights by learning about their rights, by recognizing their power vis a vis the coercive state apparatus, by overcoming their feelings of fear, and by mobilizing adequate support for their struggles. The history of common people's struggles, however, suggests that such movements are lost instantly when the struggles fail to remain nonviolent. Of course, a peaceful approach is slow to bear its fruits.

Are we prepared to struggle for our citizenship rights fearlessly? Can we keep our struggles focused and peaceful? Do we believe in fairness and the protection of rights of all Pakistanis irrespective of their class, gender, ethno-linguistic background, religious orientation, and other bases of individual and collective identities? Are we prepared to create a good balance between our personal interests and our national interests? If the answer to these questions is in affirmative, then we will ensure a much better future for our coming generations.

In the short run, the best we can do is to think about the safe and prosperous future of our children and start our struggle for citizenship rights on all possible fronts. But, here lies a rub. The English state actually granted citizenship rights in a period of relative growth and prosperity, supported partly by the British colonial possessions. Moreover, the British welfare state has recently rolled back considerably as a result of the tensions created by global capitalism. Given the current state of the Pakistani economy, the struggles for citizenship rights may not receive much attention unless such struggles are somehow tied with a national covenant of state-civil society partnership for a better future for all.