Elders used to tell strange stories of ‘Gora Raj [the White Colonial Rule]’, not in the distant past, with such relish as if the stuff came from the distant land of fairies; fascinating yet incredible.

What was considered out of this world was something that belonged to everyday world, prosaic and mundane. It was about the concept of rule of law introduced by the White in a society that had seen rule but not law. Raja or his vassal was the personification of rule and what he uttered was law, good or bad. Latter was predominantly the case in most situations.

Caste rules and class status were the paramount factors in the mind of ruler or so-called judge appointed by him while dealing with the cases of criminal nature or disputes between different parties. Advantage was always with ones who were higher in caste and class hierarchies. People with low caste and class status were accepted as lesser human beings and thus less deserving of justice even if they were aggrieved party.

Rule of law which is now accepted as the mainstay of democratic or egalitarian society had been so alien in the Subcontinent that the East India Company and later the Colonial Raj administration felt compelled to use coercion to introduce and implement the notion and practice of equality of subjects - the subjugated weren’t citizens - before law, a phenomenon which is now taken for granted at least at conceptual level. In Bengal for example an officer of The Company was informed by his spooks that a widow was forcibly being dragged by a multitude to be cremated along the body of her husband to perform the ritual of ‘Sati’. He immediately sent his force to control the crowd and bring to him the elders that led the cortege. The officer snubbed the elders and ordered them to desist from such a practice. The elders replied he had no right to interfere in their religious affairs and ‘Sati’ was a sacred ritual in their country. Finding the elders adamant the officer said; ‘In my country the law is that burning someone is a murder and anyone who commits a murder is hanged. You perform your ritual. I will apply my law and hang all of you’. That’s, it’s reported, how the ritual of Sati ended in Bengal.

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Colonialism was highly exploitative at macro level but at micro level things were conceived and experienced differently by the people due to highly discriminatory traditional socio-political structures aligned against them. Notion of rule of law and equality of subjects before law was something entirely new as well as exhilarating for the masses. This liberality enthused the masses but rattled the so-called old local elites so much that apparently enlightened educationist and social reformer Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in a delegation met the colonial authorities to express their concern over the British practice of treating the ‘nobles’ and ‘riff raff’ in the same manner in the court of law which he thought was humiliating for what now can be termed ignoble nobility. The people found semblance of dignity in what precisely was humiliation for the upper castes and classes under the new colonial dispensation. With the end of colonial occupation and emergence of Pakistan as an independent state civil and military bureaucracy, landed gentry and nascent industrial and business classes suddenly found immense power without oversight that had been invested with the colonial state. They in a short span of time became Rajas and Maharajas; they assumed the power of colonialists sans regard for rule of law which defined the colonial administration that made it in a way popular with the masses.

There is little scope for rule of law where caste, clan, tribe, creed and class function as real makers and markers of human identity.

Elders used to narrate that if a village got inkling that a single lowly policeman was coming to a village, panic would seize all the inhabitants including the landed ones and the suspects would flee their homes to hide in the crops and bush. Such was the power of the state. Now juxtapose this with what has been happening and still happens in Punjab in the context of public-police relations. If for example a local biggie is signaled to stop at a police check post, he would simply find it below his ‘dignity’ to comply. If chased, he would have a row with the policemen as if his privilege had been breached. He with his connections at high places could easily get the police chief of the area transferred or suspended if the officer failed to genuflect to him and apologise for the ‘misdemeanour’ of his subordinates.

In the post-colonial state of Pakistan police, the civil law-enforcement agency, openly humiliates plebeians –who in the Constitution are declared citizens with equal rights- and get publicly humiliated by patricians who are an absolutely phoney lot, to say the least.

Late Ustad Gaam, a popular Punjabi poet, in his old age was asked a question in a radio interview: ‘which poet used to get applauded most in the poetry recitals [Mushairas] when you were young?’ ‘The one who had the largest number of hockey wielders as his fans’ came pat reply from the Ustad.