Dawn'da Utanma ve Utanmazlık Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme

Shame and shamelessness

“You must never lose your sense of shame. If one is past all shame, what is one fit for? One lives like a bird in moult, shedding virtues like plumes all pointing down to hell” — Wolfram von Eschenbach (German poet.) I’VE been wrestling with this idea — the essentiality of shame for retaining humanity — for some time now. But I am reminded of it every time I read in the news about how one judge or the other has, again, successfully continued Imaan Mazari and Hadi Chattha’s perverse incarceration. The novel Shame presents another take on the idea. While acknowledging its necessity, it argues shame is never truly lost. It is suppressed, it is unacknowledged, it is transferred to others, but it invariably re-emerges, nay erupts, mutated into manifestations of violence and tyranny throughout society. Surviving in Pakistan (but, more specifically, thriving in Pakistan) demands the suppression of shame. Being more fortunate, we suppress the shame of a cruel and rapacious system built to profit the powerful by exploiting the powerless. As Muslims, we suppress our shame at how we steadily criminalise the very existence of our minorities and force them to leap through ever-higher hoops to earn their right to live. As citizens, we suppress the shame of a state that has long abandoned any pretence to being representative and casually disappears dissidents. As lawyers, we suppress the shame of a legal system indifferent to justice and riddled with cowardice and venality. We suppress the shame, not only from fear of the consequences of speaking or acting, but so we can live with ourselves. There are a few, however, who feel the sting of shame more sharply. They speak, and act, while we watch. They carry the burden of our collective shame and expiate it. There are a few who carry the burden of our collective shame and expiate it. Imaan and Hadi belong on that list. One might not subscribe to all their opinions. One might think them misguided in some of the causes they choose to advocate. And, while ensconced in the quiet safety of one’s living room, one can disagree with their or, more particularly, her manner of articulation. But while we may not possess the courage to emulate them, do we lack even the shame to admire them? This January, Judge Afzal Manjoka sentenced the couple to prison for 17 years. As per the judgement, Imaan’s crime was sending six tweets. In one, she posted a picture of Mahrang Baloch raising a victory sign and encouraged the public to raise their voice against fake encounters, enforced disappearances and killings in Balochistan. In another, she said innocents kept in illegal detention and torture cells were also victims — just like those targeted in terrorist attacks. In a third tweet, she said state repression in Balochistan was making the insurgency worse. In a fourth, she argued that reports about anti-terrorist operations by security officials in Balochistan had lost credibility. Two of her tweets were about KP. In the first, she said “we said never forget but acted like nothing happened. The terrorist who had our children slaughtered was set free by the state. The disastrous good Taliban vs bad Taliban policy continues even today”. Presumably, she was referring to the TTP’s former spokesperson, Ehsanullah Ehsan, who initially surrendered and was detained in a military safe-house but later ‘escaped’ and claimed to be living the expatriate’s dream in Turkiye. Notably, the parents of the 147 children in the Army Public School massacre earlier raised the same grievance in their petition before the Supreme Court. Her second tweet condemned the forced disappearance of Ghazi Amanullah, brother of PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen, and argued the state was targeting peaceful dissidents and their families. As I said earlier, one might object to the tenor of some of her speech. But the content? Who seriously disagrees that the good Taliban, bad Taliban strategy we’ve followed on and off in Afghanistan and Pakistan for three decades has, on each occasion, come back to bite us? Or that decades of the state’s undiscriminating repression in Balochistan has only fuelled the insurgency? But even if you disagree, and are a genuine adherent of the ‘Pindi knows best’ philosophy, do you reckon people expressing the contrary view should be convicted of terrorism and jailed for 17 years? Poor Hadi, of course, didn’t even tweet anything himself. The judgement accuses him, however, of retweeting four of Imaan’s tweets. Unstated in the judgement (but imprudently expressed by Chief Justice Sarfaraz Dogar in an earlier, unrelated, case) is his true crime: being a Pakistani man who cannot control his own wife. But my question is not to Judge Manjoka, nor about how closely his judgement of Jan 24 hews to the narrative expressed in the press conference held on Jan 6 by a security official accusing Imaan of being “a lawyer for terrorists” and “a foreign agent”. My question is to everyone who wears a judicial robe: how is it possible to witness the travesty of Imaan and Hadi’s trial, the breach of every principle of due process, the utter frivolity of the charges against them, the draconian punishments awarded to them, and not feel an outpouring of shame at one’s own helplessness? It is to everyone who wears a black coat. How can one belong to a profession committed to upholding the rule of law yet observe the presidents of the Supreme Court Bar and Islamabad High Court Bar (belonging to the Asma Jahangir group, no less!) defending these convictions; and witness the failure of the majority of bars to rise to the defence of their own, without feeling the sharp sting of shame? The question is about the nature of shame itself. What happens to a society forced to live without it? The writer is a member of the Pakistan Bar Council. Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2026