Written by Dr. Syed Ehtisham

My submission is that the Feudal system, Army, Bureucrats and Mullahs constitute the Evil Quad of Pakistan.
What do we mean by feudalism?

It has several facets – moral and ethical values, political and economic system, market economy integrating with it etc.
In my view all the above are a composite whole. Moral and ethical values get far more exposure as they result in cruel and medieval violation of Human Rights.
A typically sad story of “vani” was posted recently. A person was killed. The murderer was convicted and sentenced to death by the sessions court. An appeal was filed in High Court. But a compromise was reached by the parties. The murderer was required to pay the family of the victim blood money. He did not have it. The village punchayat decided that five girls from the extended family of the convicted murderer – all under ten at the time-be married off to boys from the victims extended family. The girls are now educated, the boys remain country bumpkins, and the girls refuse to live with the “spouses” they were “nikahified” to when they were babies. One cleric says that the Nikahs are not valid. But the victim’s family asserts their right under the “vani” scheme and the grooms, to bring the point home as it were, shot and injured two brothers of the girls. They, presumably, did not shoot to kill as they would, in turn, have to provide vani girls.
This story is very instructive and presents so many socially accepted norms of the society.
First, the High Court had to surrender its jurisdiction under the Law of Qisas. The murder was deemed an offence against a family and not the state. This would logically open the way, if a rich person was so inclined, to murder a poor person and reach a compromise to pay a bit of his ill gotten wealth. There is little chance that the compromise will be turned down. People when they are starving, in a State with negligible social supports, sell their daughters into concubinage. All the rich person has to do is to take care not to kill a person from an affluent family.
Second, we face the concept of the female human as commodity. Her body is for a punchayat to sell/barter or mortgage even under age girls. To my mind this is a greater atrocity than a punchayat ordained rape. In the latter case the victims are at least adults, not babies.
Third, babies can be legally wedded under parental/gaurdian consent.
Fourth, a cleric says that the nikah is not valid. This is a peculiarly “Islamic” fuddle. There should, one would have thought, be no controvercy on such a basic legal contract as a Nikah.
One could write a book on the moral turpitude of the feudal society, and people have done so, but parade of naked women through a village bazzar, first night of a bride in the chieftain’s bed (not the husband), “Honor” kliing, wedding to the Quran, bedding peasant’s wives routinely, forcing school teachers to leave the village lest the children be infected by the literacy virus, serfdom, bonded labor, feudal jails are a few illustrative examples.
Now let us move on to economic impact of feudalism. Land is not scientificlly utilized. With out ownership rights the tiller does not have an incentive to do his best. He is likely to be dispossessed any way, if he can not come up with his over lord’s share, as it would inevitably happen from time to time. An independent small farmers’ share of water is routonely usurped if the big man’s lands do not get enough of it.
But the biggest albatross is the instinctive resistance of large estate holders to modern farming techniques. They are apprehensive, and correctly so, that the advent of modern technology, though it gave them enhanced revenues, would sound the death knell of their privelege. They love their place in heirarchy, and rightly so from their perspective, their demi-god status, which no amount of money can offer.
And privelege gave monetary dividend too. Aggricultural income was tax exempt!!. They now pay a nominal tax. Buying barren land was a standard measure of tax evasion. I know a lot of doctors in Karachi who did that.
Inter related with their perogeratives is their sway over the local bureucrats and the police. Vast majority of their crimes are not registerred by the police, that is, if the victim dare approach the police station. If a dare-devil does, he is likely to have his mud hut ransacked and his women folk abducted.
They get away with murder, and weddings to the Quran to keep the property in the family (in country head of PPP has two sisters so married).
This, incidentally, works at the national level as well. Bhutto pointedly asked a recalcitrant High Court judge if his daughter still went to college.
The local Deputy Commisioner (now DCO) will back them up. It is a symbiotic relationship. The feudal will protect them by virtue of his seat in the parliament.
Election in rural constituencies, 80% of the whole lot, is a farce. Peasants are told off to vote for one or the other faction of feudals. It is a veritable musical chairs. Parliamentary seats are inherited. All political parties are patronized. It is a family affair. The most notable example is Abida Husain in ML, and her husband Fakhre-Imam in PPP.