Post-Retirement Pundits

The subject under discussion here is the conduct of most civil servants and bureaucrats once they are retired from their posts.

In commonplace parlance, post-retirement pundits are public servants in Pakistan who remain silent or resistant to reforms while in power. However, after retirement, these same characters often become vocal advocates for systemic change.

Now, their conduct could be interpreted either as an attempt to improve the country’s conditions by offering expert advice and guidance or as a strategy to remain relevant in public discourse.

Offhand, one could say that had the awakening of a ‘sleeping reformer’ in these characters been a genuine transformation, motivated by a mission to help people by recommending reforms that would alleviate public suffering, we would have had some glimpse of these qualities in them even during their active service, when they were in a position even to implement these. So, complete absence of any such reformist activism during their active service - due to either to lack of courage or holding of their personal interests higher than everything else - their much-belated transformation into a reformer and full-time activist in the post-retirement period, would probably be due to a desire to have the best of both worlds by benefiting from the system during service and also seeking glory and recognition post-retirement by saying “all the right things” at the top of their lungs.

Dual-role characters, as described above, are quite active even these days. They throw punches all around and don’t spare even the dedicated founding leaders. During one such theatrical show, one belated reformer even ‘castigated’ the Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah for not preventing the partition of Punjab and Bengal, which he had vowed not to accept, implying that he was not the strong leader that he is believed to be.

The gentleman didn’t realize that during strategic negotiations, the parties initially demand much more than they hope to achieve. This enables them to achieve their objectives through give-and-take, essential to all negotiations.

The gentleman also ignored the fact that, because of their much larger population, Hindu leaders were in an advantageous position as a pressure group in comparison to Muslims. Moreover, having fought and snatched power mostly from Muslim rulers, the British rulers were naturally more inclined to favour Hindu leaders. Also, some Muslim leaders who owned vast tracts of land were ‘persuaded’ to join the All-India Muslim League only when the Hindu leaders announced their intention to abolish large landholdings by individuals in post-partition India. Despite all this, Quaid-e Azam’s success in securing a separate Muslim country was spectacular. And the ill-treatment of Muslims in the post-partition India did prove Quaid-e-Azam’s quest for a separate country for Muslims to be the right decision.

The reform leader also claimed that Quaid-e-Azam had established Pakistan in the name of Islam and had promised that everything would be in line with the Islamic requirements, but that has not been the case. In his criticism, he conveniently ignored the fact that Quaid-e-Azam created Pakistan but didn’t get enough time to consolidate it the way he had wanted. Also, Quaid-e-Azam was not a traditional Muslim cleric or a zealot. He successfully secured a separate country for Muslims where they were free to exercise and observe their religious practices, with non-Muslims also given the same freedom.