**Living in the jungle
*By Sadiq Jafri ***
Two years after the men who raped Mukhtar Bibi were sentenced to death, the case has resumed in the High Court. What lessons can be learnt from the now infamous incident that got worldwide attention? asks Sadiq Jafri.
After an interval of about 18 months, the Multan Bench of the Lahore High Court has resumed hearing of the infamous gang-rape case that took place in Meerwala two years ago. The Anti-Terrorism Court of Dera Ghazi Khan had sentenced six culprits to death on the complaint of the victim, Mukhtar Bibi. As a concurrence in the following months, if not a retort to the judgment, crime against women registered a radically upward drift in southern Punjab. Criminals, essentially landlords or supported by them, threw acid on women’s faces, gang-raped them, traded them like animals, shaved their heads and eyebrows, and, paraded them naked in public. The latest case has been that of a revenge rape of two women in Kabirwala.
Most of these horrific actions took place under the command of panchayats rampant in villages all across the country, where landlords, pirs, waderas or sardars of the area preside over these illegal courts. Many take the recent trend of crimes against women as a signal of defiance by the landlords against the death sentence to the offenders in the Meerwala case, a decree that has yet to be executed.
The landlords and their cronies justify the gruesome crimes against women on the pretext of native traditions. The argument put forth in defence of the continuation of these illegal courts is that while the government has failed to provide protection and equality to the poor, they have no other option but to seek justice from these panchayats.
The opposing view is that if these illegal courts are not at all a necessity, the ‘justice’ handed out by them always culminates in viciousness against the weakest, mostly the women. The panchayats, they argue, have never punished the strong and the powerful.
The Mastoi tribe, whose four men had raped Mukhtar Bibi, then 30, on the night of June 22, 2002, on the orders of a 200-strong panchayat, amplified coercive measures against her and her family during the legal proceedings. They had wanted her to withdraw the case. One of the rapists, Abdul Khaliq, even came out with a nikahnama, pretending to be her husband.
Mukhtar Bibi, and her supporters, howsoever poor they are, have not given in yet. This is mainly because of the state support shown by the executive authorities in the form of legal assistance and a few uplift measures in her village, Basti Tatla, Tehsil Jatoi, 115 kilometres south-west of Multan, which came after a media buildup that spread her story all over the world.
Furthermore, after going through the most demeaning experience of her life, Mukhtar lost most of her fears and decided to fight back. When I visited her soon after the episode two years ago, she said: “If the worst comes to the worse, they will kill me. Then why shouldn’t I die after pushing a few of them to death first?”
The Anti-Terrorism Court of DG Khan had found four Mastoi tribesmen, Abdul Khaliq, Allah Ditta, Fayyaz Hussain and Ghulam Farid guilty of raping Mukhtar Bibi; Faiz Mohammad played top jurist at the panchayat that took the rape decision, and Ramzan Pachaar performed as arbitrator in the brutal drama.
Mukhtar Bibi’s rape was a punishment for her younger brother, then 11, for having ‘illicit’ relations with a 25-year-old Mastoi woman, whose relatives gang-raped Mukhtar to restore the tribe’s honour. The court found that the culprits had fabricated this accusation to hide the fact that the boy had been sodomized earlier that day. Behind all this hostility was the Mastoi tribesmen’s craving to force the victim family to vacate their small piece of land.
After the judgment was pronounced, Mukhtar Bibi filed appeals in the High Court, against the acquittal of eight other co-jurists and the extraction of Section 354-A PPC against all the accused that deals with the humiliation of the modesty of women, a crime punishable by death. The state also filed similar appeals. The criminals, on the other hand, challenged the punishment, pleading not guilty.
A few weeks after the judgment, another panchayat in Vehari ‘authorized’ local strong men to force Sarwar Mai, a married woman, to parade naked in her village after shaving her head and eyebrows. Her husband had expressed doubts about her chastity. In December that year, a Mailsi landlord Siddiq Mitro raped Faiz Mai and then shaved her head and eyebrows.
Over a dozen cases of acid throwing had been reported; three women died of burns. The men responsible for these crimes did not try to hide or escape. Heroically, they submitted themselves to the police and narrated the details rather arrogantly to media persons, typically describing women as the creators of all evils and declaring that they had done the appropriate thing by punishing them.
Following these crimes against women, a multitude of seminars, public meetings, debates and rallies have been held. Many new bodies have come up with the task of waging a “war on violence against women.” There has been much talk about framing severe laws against such jirgas and panchayats, honour killings, revenge/honour rape and humiliation of women.
However, no real action has been taken yet. It seems every time some hidden but very powerful spirit stops the action from taking place. Many think we are an inhuman and uncivilized society and insulting women is our tradition. On the whole it seems a lost cause.
Landlords have had a history of defiance against the central governments’ authority since time immemorial. It is not just that they want to subjugate their women for some sadistic pleasure; they want complete power over the area that they possess, and they view the people living in that place, men or women, as part of their property. In most parts of the country, they own the lands, while in tribal areas, they share the revenue. In exchange for a smooth and regular agricultural, mineral and natural produce, they want no interruption at all from the government.
This arrangement has been working since even before the Mughal Empire. At that time, the areas forming Pakistan today were considered far off places and most of the Delhi-based governments had settled for a peaceful co-existence. The landlords were required to accept political supremacy of the government and pay the revenues. Also, they would supply manpower to the army and help the local executive authorities in their personal and official needs.
The central governments always tried to be friendly towards these landlords and sardars, but the latter never really submitted willingly. Most of the times they were looking for creating trouble by exploiting the internal weaknesses of the governments and by supporting the rebel princes and other contenders of the throne. They would even invite foreign invaders to attack the country, only to manipulate the situation to their own benefit.
Their prime objectives were: fudging of the real agricultural produce, evasion of government revenues and loans, encroachment over weaker neighbours’ properties, extortion of the maximum share of produce from the farmers, and a free control over the lives, properties and honour of their subjects; the last being not an objective in itself, but a method to achieve the earlier ones.
Humiliating weak women is a part of that method, other methods being spreading of linguistic and regional hatred, and dividing common people on the basis of community, caste and tribe. Debasing of women terrorized those who were ruled and made them subservient before their masters.
Successive Delhi governments found themselves blackmailed and helpless in front of the landlords. The landlords loathed each other, but one slight hint from the government to curb their traditional power was enough for them to unite.
During the years of great anarchy in the 18th century, these landlords became almost autonomous and all powerful, siding with this or that rebel on the promise of non-interference in their internal affairs. They nurtured terrorists and gun fighters and provided hiding place to lawbreakers when they ran to escape the legal consequences of their crimes. The British used these landlords for the perpetuation of their rule, and traded people’s rights for enhanced revenues and a higher number of army recruits, especially during the two World Wars.
After independence, one of the first and foremost steps that the newly-formed Indian government took was to abolish big land holdings. That eliminated the culture to a great extent, though the mindset still persists. In Pakistan, an effort towards this was frustrated after the first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in a public meeting.
The landlords formed an “Anjuman Tahaffuz Haqooq-i-Zamindaran Tahtu Sharia” led by none other than Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan. The chief purpose of this body was to protect the rights and the authority of the landlords and sardars, which they enjoyed before Pakistan came into being. All the big named landlords of those days like the Daultanas, Gurmanis, Mamdots, Noons, etc., were members of this anjuman.
They fought against land reforms by finding Islamic injunctions to the effect that there should be no limit on the holding of lands. They supported an insertion in the Objectives Resolution in the Constitution for this sole purpose. The war finally reached the Federal Shariat Court, which decreed that Islam does not allow control over land holdings. That order stops land reforms from being implemented till today.