Changing The Thana Culture

The following three legacies of the British have formed an integral part of the political culture of Pakistan:

1. Feudalism
2. Pir-i-faqiri
3. Police and Thana

I’ll briefly elaborate on the first two; as time passes land holdings of Feudals continue to decrease through an ongoing evolutionary process: as each Feudal begets more children, the landholding of a Feudal family decreases. With the decrease of land, comes the decrease of wealth, prestige and power. So it can be surmised that a land reform system engineered by nature is already in place and its progression cannot be thwarted and its end result which is the permanent demise of Feudalism cannot be averted and can be predicted with the minimum of clairvoyance.
Although there is no doubt that in the History of Islam Sufis have played a very important role and have provided great services to the cause of Islam. Unfortunately the Pir-i-faqiri system that is prevalent today in Pakistan is not the legacy of the Great Sufis of Islamic history but of the British. As time goes on the Pir-i-faqiri system is also winding to an end, as people become more educated or economically hard up to provide funds for Pirs. Consequently Pirs are having a hard time to find or sustain financially sound murids. Therefore it can also be conjectured that as people become more educated and aware, the system of Pir-i-faqiri will also die and wither away.
All of these three systems were traditionally and coherently interconnected and played a very important role in helping the British to administer rural and backward municipalities. Conversely as the first two systems have weakened, the police and Thana system has been able to successfully build a strong edifice on the graves of the two. Now why has that happened? There is not a single answer to the phenomena but a set of answers like the sickness of a particular patient cannot be attributed to a single factor but to a set of factors. The first is the obvious one: the weakening of political institutions elicited by the continuous dissolution of assemblies has led to the strengthening of bureaucratic institutions. The second factor is the historical factor, which requires a deeper study in order to provide a more profound understanding to the problem; it will also lead in finding a plausible solution to the problem.
As I have mentioned earlier that all three are a legacy of the British, although Feudalism and Pir-i-Faqiri existed before the British but the present mix that we have with the police forming a vital ingredient can be explicitly attributed to the British. To find a cure to a disease, the doctor has to go to the source of the disease and as a result we must also go to the source of the phenomena: British culture and History.
In the 11th century, William 1st who was himself a feudal vassal to the king of France became so powerful that on his own accord he conquered England while retaining the French area of Normandy under his control. After the Norman conquest for many years to come William and his successors administered England by allotting land to French speaking Normans, a system of Feudalism to keep the population in control and loyal to the crown. The system of Pir-i-faqiri which is known as Sainthood in English has also been an integral part of western medieval culture. To illustrate an illuminating example, if one reads the 14th century literary classic, “The Canterbury Tales” written by Geoffrey Chaucer, ironically one gets the feeling that the 14th century European classic is telling the story of rural Pakistani’s in the 21st century except that the people and Pirs belong to the Christian faith. In my opinion old literature is an important document of society’s cultural history and needs a more careful study. The point I am trying to make is that the system that the British inculcated in India was not something that was innovated overnight to administer India but it was already prevalent in English society and was aptly translated into a desi version.
Now while Feudalism, Pir-i-faqiri has been eradicated in England and the police force has gone through a complete reformation and play a constructive role in western society, the same thing has not happened in Pakistan, now why is that? If the answer is to be summed up in a single word then it would be: Economics.
During the nineteenth century industrial revolution in Europe changed the socio/economic/political landscape of the western world; while the economy in the west improved in Pakistan the economy has plummeted and there are no indicators through which we can predict that the economy is going to get any better. All police reforms introduced by the central government never seem to trickle down to rural areas, where police barbarity continues to expand unfettered and unabated. What problems does this create?
The first victim of an unchecked police force is justice itself. A local SHO of a rural community can do and get away with what Sharon is doing to the Palestinians and India is doing to the Kashmiris. Secondly a whole network or industry of thana mafias has mushroomed in rural communities, civilians affiliated with the police who have innocent people arrested and released on a commission basis. This network of thugs historically always aligns itself during elections with the political candidate belonging to the King’s Party or establishment backed ticket because their livelihood depends upon it; implicitly self-elucidating my last victim of Thana politics: democracy itself. Pre-poll rigging would not be possible without thana politics, poor people in rural communities get intimidated by establishment backed political parties because they know that they will be effective with the police.
Now the interesting thing to note is that while the problem is imported, the solution needs to be an indigenous one because we are socio-economically different from the west. As I have mentioned earlier western style police reforms never seem to work or reach far flung rural communities. Why we have not found a solution to this problem is our own lack of innovation and originality and dependence on imported ideas.
I can speak for my own area, Muzafargarh; that is one area where I think a police force is not needed, in fact rural communities can do without police forces completely. Thana’s should be completely abolished; instead of Thana’s, rural communities should have service centers. The purpose of service centers would be to assist citizens in finding a solution to their problems with the inclusion of providing free legal aid and advice. A service center for dealing with terrorist crimes, murder, robbery and other heinous crimes could be separated from the rest of the service centers, which will have an elite and professionally trained commando unit to deal with acts of terrorism. For women there will be separate service centers where women can directly take their problems and ask for assistance but the women police serving in these service centers will not be like the women police of Pakistan but will be professionally trained on the lines of women police in Qadaffi’s Libya.
An interesting event of the seventies is worth recalling when Punjab police went on strike but the police force out of fear of losing their jobs were forced to call off their strike within 24hrs after the then Governor of Punjab, Ghulam Mustafa Khar in a historic address at Mochi Gate, Lahore, threatened to do away with the entire police force completely. I think time has come to put his historic words into
action, “Punjab Police Dismiss”.