The tragedy of Pakistani society lies not merely in its repeated afflictions, but in its failure to react meaningfully to them.

As Shakespeare observed, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” Yet Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, “Those who do not move do not feel their chains.” “And those” Gotthold Lessing says, “Who mock their chains aren’t always free”.

“In contrast to the Palestinians—whose resistance affirms their subjectivity and whose struggle for liberation is rooted in material conditions, as Marx alludes to—the people of Pakistan seem addicted to their chains: restless, yet directionless, embodying Dante’s chilling warning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.””

This paralysis of will echoes Max Horkheimer’s critique in The Eclipse of Reason, where he notes, “Men have been released from [concentration] camps who have taken over the jargon of their jailers and with cold reason and mad consent... contend that they have not been treated so badly after all.” This eerie normalization of subjugation resonates with the Pakistani condition, where survival—stripped of dignity—is misrecognized as destiny. As Brutus tells Cassius in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Cassius, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

The tragedy did not end with colonial withdrawal. As Frantz Fanon warned, colonialism leaves behind the “germs of rot,” which must be carefully weeded out. In Pakistan’s case, these remnants included the landed aristocracy and comprador bourgeoisie—classes shaped by and loyal to........

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