Principle

My teacher wrote the article Election Replay and a point from it struck me peculiar.

source

"Throughout the past, almost every major contestant has been resorting to some show of force for intimidating their opponents during the elections. Since everybody was involved, it was very easy to blame the political culture of the country and to say that a nation like Pakistan could not have true democracy; that this is the best which we can get.This sentiment has been reflected in the life and work of those intellectuals who have been supporting various political leaders as champions of democracy without asking those leaders to refrain from un-democratic measures for seizing and holding power."

So I was thinking that what made those people think that the nation i.e. we are worthy of such lowly practice and I drew two conclusions:

I think, we the nation led them to believe that by behaving in this particular manner. You may call it my naivete that those intellectuals or politicians are not innocent to believe what we want them to believe and I agree with that but what I am trying to say is that our behavior combined with their greed produced the extensive period full of corruption and tyranny. We, the people, take lying, cheating, backbiting as norms but this is disease. We say we know the significance of telling the truth or be fair but for example, cheating in exams is 'fun' then doing our paper on our own. Every sin is tasteful only when it is being committed but when you reflect back on it, it seems unnecessary in the sense that we could have taken another course, we had choice to be fair and clean but we were heedless. We didn't put much effort because of laziness.


So we don't respect ourselves, we undermine ourselves, our power and so they undermine and intimidate us with their (false) power, and we allow them (at least until now). If only we knew our worth, we wouldn't have let them treat us this way.

What Imran Khan did, and we must give him credit for it, that he showed the alternate way, that things can be done differently only if we would pay attention and be conscious of it. Also he set an example by doing it. By being fair, treating the people around him as his equal. During the election campaign he ate and slept with his volunteers and workers instead of hiding behind a bullet-proof glass. I am not implying that he doesn't commit mistakes or he doesn't have flaws because we all are humans and we falter now and then. What I am saying is, he was being practical and sincere with his people by showing them that they deserve better.

And we do.

This is my favorite clip.