It was interesting to note the manner in which the Prime Minister’s rhetoric evolved in the week during which it dawned on him that the opposition is more-than-likely to oust him through a no-confidence vote.

He began proceedings by repeating his set mantra of corruption and treachery pitched against his opponents. There is nothing new about this. He has been uttering this over and over again for almost a decade. However, he soon realised this wasn’t enough to achieve what he was trying to achieve. So, he then went full ‘holy’ — as if alluding that God was on his side. 

Read: Why is the PM in election mode?

But what was it that he was attempting to achieve? Two things: One, he was trying to reinvigorate the support that his party and government have been losing with alarming speed. His core urban middle-class constituents had endearingly held on to his every promise of eradicating ‘corruption’ and ‘political mafias.’ But after coming to power in 2018, or rather, after being placed there with more than a little help from some very powerful ‘friends’ within the establishment, the charismatic leader and (potential) destroyer of corruption, almost immediately found himself in a hole. 

His ‘friends’ understood that, as a personality, he wasn’t really cut out to navigate the narrow, twisty and bumpy paths that heads of government have to tread in Pakistan. So they went all-out to ‘manage’ things for him, as long as he was willing to do exactly what they wanted him to do.

From realising that his ouster is inevitable, to deploying the so-called ‘religious card’, PM Imran Khan is still coming to terms with the end game

But while doing this, there is now enough evidence to posit that he also wanted to do things his own way. However, because of his utter lack of experience in matters of governance, and because of his ideas of Pakistani politics, society and international relations that one often comes across in middle-class drawing-rooms, he ended up uncannily sabotaging and undoing what his friends had asked him to do and he did. Thus, his many infamous ‘U-turns.’

Like a myopic horse, he raced to eradicate ‘corruption,’ while at the same time being surrounded by it within his own administration. Things such as the economy, maintaining relations with Pakistan’s main trading partners and donor countries, religiously motivated violence, and violence against women, just didn’t figure much in his crusade. And when a nose-diving economy began to impact his core middle class constituents as well, they started to roll their eyes every time he delivered yet another lecture on corruption. 

Therefore, he began beefing-up his anti-corruption tirades with an increasing dose of religion. Sticking to the basics — because everything about Khan is basic and anti-complexity — he was convinced that playing the so-called ‘religious card’ is never such a bad idea in Pakistani politics, especially ever since the late 1970s.

This is rudimentary drawing-room knowledge in Pakistan. The complexities inherent in this knowledge, however, are often ignored by the intellectually lazy and basic folk. Let me explain.

While conducting research for my last book The Reluctant Republic, I realised that a majority of urban middle class Pakistanis could not tell the difference between the many Islamic sects, and especially between the Sunni sub-sects, that exist in this region. 

The understanding of Islam among the middle class folk that I interviewed, was largely clouded by binaries (‘liberal’/‘fundamentalist’) or by an understanding of Muslims as a homogenous whole with only slight variations. So, what Khan didn’t understand while playing the religious card was how the more clever exponents of this card had played it.

For example, Gen Zia focused on empowering the Deobandi Sunni sub-sect to neutralise the more volatile Barelvi sub-sect, and the Shia minority. He also adopted the language of ‘political Islam’ from Islamic ideologues such as Abul Ala Maududi to attract the expanding middle classes whose interest in religion was witnessing an increase in the 1980s. 

There was nothing more that Khan said that Zia and most Islamist political parties hadn’t already. He explored only the surface in this context (because he is all surface himself). He began to cherry-pick his way to formulate a wider, more basic, Islamist appeal.

For example, in a single breath, he is known to explain Islam as a revolutionary, enlightened, conservative, reactionary, forward, backward, rational and fossilised faith. Not very aware of what he is talking about and/or of the glaring contradictions that are so prominently present in his Islamist rhetoric, he decided to ignore the rolling eyes that had once danced on pop tunes at his rallies, and began to directly appeal to the sensibilities of the young (male) petit bourgeoisie, who always wanted to see a soap-operatic Islamist in their midst. 

His increasing turn towards playing the religious card led to the second thing he was looking to achieve. He expected his new(ish) Islamicised rhetoric to energise the above-mentioned segment, enough for them to turn up in Islamabad on the day of the no-confidence vote and threaten to make things uglier than what they had already become.

His ouster did not mean the ouster of an anti-corruption crusader anymore. It changed shape to now mean the exit of the ‘leader of the ummah’ and the true flag-bearer of all that is sacred in Pakistan. This ploy was also to nudge his erstwhile friends in the establishment who, he believes, are ‘scared’ to face religiously charged mobs.

By the time this column goes into print, either such mobs would have begun to gather in Islamabad, with Khan having every intention to burn down a house he has lost control of. Or, hopefully, someone would have infused some sense in his head by reminding him that he will be the biggest loser in a game he thinks he is setting the rules of. 

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 27th, 2022