Love you Imran

Are flowing gutters from Imran Khan’s messed up personal life impacting his standing among his supporters? There is no evidence to suggest that it is happening.

Syed Talat Hussain

Are flowing gutters from Imran Khan’s messed up personal life impacting his standing among his supporters? There is no evidence to suggest that it is happening. Those defending him continue to do so with zealotry and zest; some even more vigorously than before. The neutral public opinion may get influenced in the long run by this drip-drip of tales from an endless album of shame but anyone looking for a national outrage against an unbridled man’s chronic zipper and purse problems would be disappointed. There is none.

This speaks about an issue much larger than Imran Khan. National tolerance for his acts that would land any leader anywhere in the world in the dustbin of history is grounded in a psyche that has over decades worshiped, loved, pampered, adored, and justified a vast range of rouges.

If you deconstruct Imran’s support base you will find thick slices of urban middle classes that once revered Altaf Hussain even as Karachi’s streets soaked in blood. In the media, those who overlooked his murderous ways under the garb of “balanced reporting” and “contextual analysis” are the same people who have consistently rooted for Imran Khan. Now they have no qualms in making him look like a victim of state persecution even as he faces some very serious charges.

Another chunk of his backers is those who saw General Pervaiz Musharaf as a messiah and a hero. From business houses in Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot, and Faisalabad to the educated urban upper-end of the society, x Musharrafites see in Imran an extension of the dead dictator, whose reckless ways deepened Pakistan’s social and religious frictions. However, they cheered him on because he “sounded sooo convincing.” They were addicted to his ability to churn out endless sweet rhetoric about making Pakistan great.

No less prominent in the phalanx of Imran’s support base is that section of society that has had a longstanding affair with a Taliban-like system in Pakistan, and who find inspiration from half-baked and warped theological fixes for complex national challenges. These are the same men and women who made contributions to the local Taliban’s jihad against social evils, made loud arguments for enforcement of Shariah, and thought that a real Islamic state was taking shape in Malakand under Sufi Muhammad. A society that can worship Altaf, wholeheartedly endorse Musharraf, and welcome the Taliban is psychologically primed to see a halo over Imran’s head even though he might be standing knee-deep in sewers. Dictators, fascists, con artists, extremists. A great number among us have always loved them. Why won’t they continue to love Imran? He gives them a four-in-one satisfaction.