From hero to inmate: Imran Khan’s unsettling journey

If you want to become a king in countries like Pakistan, then you have to be mentally prepared for some things. First of all, you have to be ready for character assassination. You will face it, and you will do it to others. In the beginning, smarter people will use you, and then after some time, you will also learn this ruthless way of how to step on someone’s corpse and move ahead by raising your stature. Most importantly, you have to go to jail yourself and also put your opponents in jail when you get the chance. It is also possible that you go so far to gain power that one day you are hanged like Bhutto, declared a terrorist like Nawaz Sharif and forced to live in exile in Saudi Arabia for 10 years or be ready to suffer in jail for 14 years like Zardari. You can also be assasinated in public like Benazir Bhutto. You also have to spend time in jails like prime ministers, Yusuf Raza Gilani, Shehbaz Sharif, Raja Pervez Ashraf and Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

So, if Imran Khan’s going to jail something very unusual that has never happened before? Everyone is sad as if something unfortunate has happened? Maybe the reason is that Imran Khan’s fan club had given him the title of the Quaid-e-Azam second. They all had in mind that Imran Khan was a different persona and a leader from all the Sharifs, Zardaris, or other politicians. He has become a leader to put others in jail, not to go to jail himself. On top of that, Imran Khan’s image was created by his social media team in such a way that read that if you people want to see the living Quaid-e-Azam, then look at Khan. Imran Khan’s pictures were also photoshopped to match Quaid-e-Azam and spread on social media so that people’s minds would be convinced that Quaid-e-Azam had made Pakistan, Imran Khan would save Pakistan. Because Quaid-e-Azam did not go to jail in the British era, while his opponents like Gandhi and Nehru used to go and come out of jail, so everyone thought Khan would never go to jail like the Quaid. Besides, because Khan did not face the allegations that Nawaz Sharif and Zardari had and was considered clean in comparison. No one thought he could go to jail or who would have the courage to touch Imran Khan and whoever dared would be destroyed. Imran Khan and his fan club, in the meantime, forgot that a powerful person like Bhutto was also hanged.

Without going into the debate of whether Imran Khan was wrongly or rightly put in jail, the question is what will Khan learn from jail? Will Khan come out a changed person? Will he come back as Nelson Mandela and start a new political life by forgiving all his enemies and opponents or take revenge after becoming the prime minister? This is an interesting debate. But the news coming out of jail about Imran Khan is not encouraging. Last week, when four members of the election commission were hearing a contempt case against him in jail, in which Imran Khan and Fawad Chaudhry were indicted, the former prime minister reportedly flared up and threatened the members that he knows everyone’s faces and he will file cases of treason against them under the constitution, which carries the death penalty. Imran Khan reportedly advanced to hit the member from Sindh with a fist, but lawyers and other people intervened and stopped him. Imran Khan’s sisters took care of their brother on the occasion. It is reported that Imran Khan also abused the election commission members.

What does this incident prove? Surely Imran Khan will not come out of jail as Mandela. If he gets a chance, he will become the prime minister like Hasina Wajid of Bangladesh and settle scores with his opponents. Bhutto also put his life in danger when he threatened General Zia in a similar way that he would not spare him. Thus General Zia had a clear message that if Bhutto survived, he would hang him. Thus sensible people started telling Zia that there is one grave and two men. If Bhutto had not threatened General Zia at that time, Zia would not have thought of eliminating Bhutto.

Similarly, after coming out of jail, Nawaz Sharif, as a prime minister, wanted to take action against General Musharraf because Musharraf had put him in jail. And then General Raheel Sharif had a fight with him over this matter and finally the Dawn Leaks emerged and we all know the outcome, and one day Nawaz Sharif went to jail for the third time. Is he (Imran) repeating history by abusing, trying to hit, and threatening to hang the members of the election commission by filing treason cases? He is sending the same message that if he comes out and becomes the prime minister, then no one will be spared.

The question is what do you learn in jail? Asif Zardari told me in 2003 on the premises of the accountability court Rawalpindi, in response to my question, when asked what jail had taught him. Zardari said one word: “jail has taught him patience”. He explained that in the beginning (in jail), a person thinks of himself as a king, that he is the president, prime minister, or the husband of the prime minister and the whole jail staff is his servant. But after a while, he realizes that let aside the jail staff, he is at the mercy of a cop who is on duty outside the cell. He (policeman) can let him (inmate) sleep peacefully or make noise by hitting his stick on the bars, hitting his boots hard on the ground or coughing loudly and if he does not turn off the light then what can you do to him.

Zardari said that jail forces you to compromise no matter how big a gun you are. The first compromise you make is with the cop outside your cell, and you learn the art of spending your days in jail by accepting his authority. You convince yourself that now is not the time to fight or argue with anyone. Now is the time to wait for your time to come. If you look at it, those who learned to be patient in jail came back to power. A few days ago in an interview with Hamid Mir, Zardari said that Imran Khan has not even completed a year in jail, which starts asking after two years that, yes sir, how are you.

The same is happening to Imran Khan who is now suffering from anger and depression after being disappointed from everywhere and threatening and abusing the members of the election commission and threatening to file treason cases against them under the constitution and give them the death penalty or life imprisonment after becoming the prime minister. He is also making his mindset clear. He did not think that a leader like him and a former prime minister would be put in jail so helplessly. Even after spending nine months in jail, his situation is getting worse. Now there are also serious cases on his wife Bushra Begum.

Surely Imran Khan is under severe stress these days. He needs to learn one thing from Asif Zardari. First of all, he should learn to spend time with the cop outside his cell. They say good things come to those who patiently wait. What to do, Khan had everything given by Allah but when patience was being distributed, he got up and left from there due to his impatience. And finally this impatience landed him in Adiala jail.