By Shazia Anwer Cheema
There is a Punjabi phrase that can be translated into the English language “Knots tied by hands sometimes have to be untied with teeth”. Pakistani society is facing such a situation.
The tsunami that was produced to destroy ‘old’ Pakistan to replace with ‘Naya Pakistan’ is yet not over and the cognitive dizziness that was shaped to keep ‘Naya Pakistan’ alive is still hitting old Pakistan badly. This Psy Game when it was programmed had several linguistic tools behind it (like those needed by computer programming) for developing conceptual blending. If someone wishes to cap this Tsunami of hate, destruction, and disasters, one has to unpack how this Tsunami of hate and destruction was formed.
Every definition has at least two components and that are connotation and denotation of the definition and the definition defines every noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb preposition, conjunction, and interjection. In simple words, the language that is the most important tool of communication is based on definition. The conceptual mechanism requires a common explanation of every part of the language that is mentioned above and the human mind is a storehouse of pre-existing conceptual knowledge acquired through embodied experiences and rules all domains of meaning-making.
When someone uses the noun ‘earthquake’, it immediately provides a schema of a series of vibrations induced in the earth’s crust by the abrupt rupture and rebound of rocks and destruction caused by the rupture.
If someone utters ‘Tsunami’, the picture that appears in mind is of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake due to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other underwater explosions and it causes destruction to land tsunami hits.
The word ‘New’ triggers the schema (perception) of discarding, replacing, disowning, and disusing the ‘Old’. The conceptual blending is a landmark in human cultural development. When using such words as a new, tsunami, and earthquake for blending with a state or a society that makes ready the human mind for discarding, replacing, disowning, or disusing the existing (old) norms, land, concepts, and notions, this process is widely being utilized to give new meanings by disowning the prevailing one and this meaning-making process is under the researches by psychologists, sociologists, semioticians who believe that such tool had been used for thousands of years to destroy societies because public started accepting destruction tools like tsunami earthquake for replacing old with new. Is it not the same as what happened with the ‘Naya Pakistan’ (new Pakistan) narrative given by former prime Imran Khan? In the first phase, he successfully injected discarding, replacing, disowning, or disusing the existing social as well as political norms of the country and his followers accepted the idea that ‘existing’ must be replaced with ‘new”. This whole process created hatred against the existing administrative, political, social, economic, and moral structure of Pakistani society because his followers accepted that Pakistan needed a tsunami that would flush out everything old from the land and then a ‘Naya Pakistan’ would be (re) built. The archetypes were reinforced through persuasion and rhetoric. Pakistani media was assigned to follow the classical design of rhetoric where television screens provided three elements in speech-making (classical design of rhetoric) that the speaker, subject, and person addressed. The speaker was Imran Khan, the subject was disowning and discrediting the existing structure of society and the person addressed (receiver/ hearer) was a whole nation. This design does not allow the receiver to contest and ask questions to the speaker thereby whatever the speaker says is just received and loaded in the public’s schemas and then this cognitive load (amount of information our working memory can process at any given time) and then this load accepts meaning of everything that is provided by the speaker. The foreign experts of ‘Naya Pakistan’ used the most lethal kind which is Epideictic rhetoric.
Epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric deals with praising or blaming someone or something and it also provides entertainment and display, including self-display (theatrical performances during Imran Khan’s public meetings and dharna (sit-in). This kind of rhetoric is known for its lethal outcomes as it is persuasive and designed to overpower an audience and bring them over to the speaker’s point of view because there is no ‘argument’ and persuasion happens through emotional proof, through exposure to examples, through the uptake of art–in short, through any symbolic interchange.
Imran’s media management was designed in such a way that any interaction with media (interviews/talks) on an anti-foundationalist design where a conversation may have passages of argument and a speaker is not forbidden to be demonstrative, but the reasoning is neither sovereign nor alone, and the conversation itself does not compose an argument.
What happened and how to Pakistan is available in the above-mentioned paras and if the current situation is examined, no one will deny that Pakistan has not been harmed by external enemies as much as the internal enemies hidden in the sleeves have played a facilitating role in harming this country and fulfilling external agendas. If we talk about Pakistani politics, the political history of Pakistan has seen many ups and downs, but the damage done to Pakistan by Imran Khan and his allies may not have been inflicted by the enemy sitting across the border. The ‘Tsunami theory’ introduced by Imran with the full support of media and the then-powerful clan provided base-work for treachery, riots, looting, and destruction that was reported on May 9, 2023. By acting in action, he created havoc in the entire country and left marks of shame, insult, and lawlessness for the nation all over the world which may take centuries to be removed.
After the May 9, 2023 incidents, Indian analysts claimed that what Imran Khan is (was) doing for India, Indians cannot (could not) do it even after spending billions of rupees. Indian analysts were of the view that India needed a person who would hinder the development of Pakistan and that is Imran Khan because India needed a person who could create divisions in Pakistan and work for the destruction of the economy and he (Imran Khan) did these all in perfect manners. Writing a letter to the IMF by PTI appealing to freeze Pakistan’s loans, writing letters to the UN to penalize Pakistan, burning Pakistani passports and flags in European and North American countries, holding demonstrations in New York outside the IMF office and now in Canada by a few conscience sellers are clear proofs what Imran Khan wishes to do with this country.
The most dangerous move of Imran Khan was expanding the fault line between the public and armed forces and the results we saw on May 9, 2023, when targets were only military-related installations, buildings, and monuments of martyrs. Indian media is bragging that Imran Khan has made the Pakistani Army controversial. Some Indian analysts in television shows claimed that Pakistan’s destruction is not far as the army is the only institution in Pakistan that can keep the country united and this (Army) is the target of Imran Khan who is a populist leader and even Pakistani courts are afraid of his popularity and give him best possible respect. This is a proven fact now that what Imran Khan has done, India cannot do even by using all its economic and military resources. Indian analysts believe that Imran Khan is fulfilling their dream, so we (Indian) should encourage and help him.
I strongly believe and have been writing that everybody who does not like Pakistan as an operational state is pitching its share to bring Imran Khan back to the government so he can complete his ‘mission’ which is nothing but the destruction of Pakistan.
Those who blindly follow Imran Khan have lost the power of independent thinking (due to cognitive reset through techniques already mentioned above) so they do not know who are the real heroes of this nation because he has changed all social norms (as mentioned above) therefore his followers have no respect for real heroes who gave and still giving their lives to cleanse the motherland from evils like terrorism, who gave their lives to save the honor of the country and traded their lives to save lives of public.
The cognitive dizziness that Imran Khan injected in 2014 in society is still helping to distract the people from their political ideology, gaining sympathy at the level of the judiciary, creating opportunities for manipulation, and undermining the military by making false assumptions about the military’s operations.
It is a proven fact that Imran’s design is inciting the public against the state, creating havoc in the country, attacking state institutions, and continuously criticizing the Pakistani Army. Alas, our higher judiciary is ‘sad to see him in jail’.
