Nasrullah Gadani: the martyr of truth …. Ali Hassan Bangwar

A society that encourages inclusion, dissent, tolerance, and expression ends up becoming an abode of holistic development. However, the ones that strangulate truth, constrain individual freedom, and deny human rights travel down in the recesses of the recession. Ours is a society that has systematically been transformed into something inhospitable for talent, integrity, freedom, and truth, and a paradise for state-sponsored criminals, corruption and kleptocracy. That is to say, even the otherwise sceptics are gathering certainty that the socioeconomic, political, and feudal-bureaucratic-bandit nexus are the state’s inventions and investment.

Though feudalism, tribalism, and other sponsored evils keep taking tolls on lives, livelihoods, and the prospectus of prosperity for a quarter century, the recent ruthless murder of Ghotki Sindh based Herculean journalist Nasrullah Gadani has reaffirmed stakeholders’ inevitability and the public’s evitability in the country. An undeterred, courageous, and honest journalist from an extreme poor socioeconomic background, Nasrullah was seen as a ray of hope in an otherwise pampered, paid, and patronised journalism and criminal cartels in the country in general and Sindh in particular. The state seems to have been bent on denying the public due sanctity, access to, and freedom of life. By so doing, the country is being reduced to a place of paradoxes, epic hypocrisy, and inhospitality.

One questioning the legitimacy of enforced disappearance disappears. One question on the exploitation of public sentiments in the name of religion earns one the accolade of heresy. One raising finger at the spinelessness of the judiciary faces contempt of court. One pointing out institutional outreach and kleptocratic practices against the public becomes a traitor. One questioning the oppressions of state-sponsored feudals ultimately faces death. However, those who’ve been looting, plundering, and persecuting the public for decades now get garlanded and rewarded.

In a society where most of the press clubs are funded and operated by the feudal-bureaucratic nexus, where much of journalism serves no more than masking the misdeeds and corruption of the elite, and where most of the journalists serve as beneficiaries of the corrupt practices, Nasrallah was metaphorically what Socrates was to the Athens. For he boldly challenged the nexus and the criminal cartels and offence economy owned and operated by local influential, state operatives, and protected outlaws. Based on the smuggling of weapons and drugs and the exorbitant earnings made from the growing and lucrative industry of kidnapping for ransom in the riverine areas of Sindh, the offence economy serves both ends and means for its operatives and beneficiaries, manning most of the institutions of the country.

In a society where most of the journalists act as courtiers to the local influential and state, the ones like Nasrullah Gadani were bound to face this fate. In a society where most journalists reproduce what they get penned from their patrons — bureaucracy, politicians, feudals and local warlords — the existence of the likes of Nasrullah Gadani was no less than an unpardonable crime. A society where most of the journalists get dictations and beg for eidi (gifts) from their patrons was bound to suffocate the likes of Nasrullah Gadani. In a society where most journalists take it as a business and means to megalomaniac ends, producing the likes of Nasrullah Gadani is perhaps once a century, if not millennia’s fortunes.

In a society where most media houses and individuals are either controlled or choose to dance to the tunes of power and prestige, Gadani’s empathy for the poor’s agonies was perhaps an unpardonable crime for whomever ill-gotten interests he has threatened. In a society where most journalists make millions, if not billions, by trading their pen, consciousness, truth, and public interests, Gadani’s homelessness was his grave sin. When truth gets deserted and traded at exorbitant prices, standing by it is akin to embracing death. And finally, to his murderers in his long-professed philosophy and slogan, ‘Bhotar my foot’ i.e. feudal under my foot.

Courtesy The Express Tribune, June 2nd, 2024.