From the series: Majoritarian Politics in South Asia, Society for Cultural Anthropology
By Noman Baig, Habib University
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| Photo by Mythri Jegathesan. |
In March 2015, Ayyan Ali, a Pakistani supermodel, was arrested at the Islamabad International Airport for attempting to carry half a million dollars in cash onto a flight to Dubai. Ayyan’s arrest quickly became a national sensation once rumors and reports that she was laundering money for prominent politicians and businessmen began to circulate. Public interest and outrage only intensified when the customs officer who had confiscated the money was murdered soon after Ayyan’s arrest. The involvement of a glamorous model, foreign currency, political corruption, Dubai (a dreamland of sorts for the majority of Pakistanis), and now murder ensured that the case dominated the news cycle in Pakistan for months on end.
Ayyan’s glamorous lifestyle—the parties she attended, the men she dated, the clothes she wore, the brands she endorsed—had been the subject of much discussion in Pakistan even before her arrest. The fact that she was caught carrying so much money thus seemed entirely reasonable (if still scandalous) given the elite social circles of which she was part. This was, many ordinary commentators at the time mused, exactly the kind of salacious affair in which the rich would be involved. The misogynistic media coverage of the case, which focused on Ayyan’s body, clothing, tattoos, and makeup, only strengthened ordinary people’s conviction that Pakistani elites were dissolute. Ayyan’s case became emblematic of what many in Pakistan believed was an ayyash—debauched—society. The Urdu term ayyashi describes a transgressive excess, a hedonism that is thought to defile the very soul. For many ordinary people in Pakistan, Ayyan’s ayyash lifestyle and her eventual arrest mirrored the malaise in which the country itself was mired. Ayyan’s arrest had only revealed the already fraying moral-ethical boundaries of the nation.
The scandal raked up by Ayyan’s arrest played an important role in setting the stage for Imran Khan’s victory in the 2018 national election. In speeches leading up to the election, Khan cited Ayyan’s case as an example of the deep political and moral corruption that needed to be rooted out in order to build a “naya” or new Pakistan. He laid particular emphasis on Ayyan’s alleged links with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom he variously called “a mafia don” and “the grandfather of corruption.” Indeed, when Ayyan was eventually granted bail, Khan claimed that the judicial decision was the outcome of a “deal” between political rivals Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. Corruption, he seemed to suggest, was the one thing that could smooth over even the most long-standing antagonisms.
It was precisely this shared bond of corruption that Khan vowed to break if elected prime minister. As a start, Khan promised, the PTI (his political party) would bring back the two hundred billion dollars of national wealth that corrupt politicians had supposedly siphoned off and stashed in illegal bank accounts in Switzerland and Panama (see note 1). This promise resonated deeply with many ordinary Pakistanis who viewed corruption as a theft of their dreams and aspirations. What was being stolen by politicians was not just money, but Pakistan’s future, its very possibility of becoming a prosperous nation. By the same token, what Khan promised to restore was not just Pakistan’s fiscal balance, but also its diminished purity and strength.
Read the full blogpost here: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-politics-of-fiscal-sentiments-in-pakistan
Notes
1. This massive figure is based on debunked news reports.
