When Democracy Becomes a Slogan: Pakistan’s Crisis of Selective Freedom

 In Pakistan, democracy has become a strangely selective idea. It is spoken with passion when directed upward, toward powerful institutions, but handled with silence when it points inward, toward homes, traditions, and social authority. Over time, democratic language has turned into a posture rather than a principle. Anti-establishment rhetoric has quietly replaced a deeper commitment to freedom itself.

Living in Karachi, you encounter this contradiction daily. In chai dhabas and drawing rooms, people speak fluently about constitutional rights, missing persons, and the abuse of state power. Often, these critiques are justified. But shift the conversation to child marriage, women’s autonomy, or authority inside the home, and the tone changes. Suddenly, democracy is accused of being foreign. Law becomes intrusion. Protection is reframed as insult.

Karachi is not unique in this, but it makes the contrast visible. This is a city where political awareness is sharp, yet social coercion is normalized. The same society that demands accountability from distant institutions often resists accountability within its own moral boundaries.

That resistance exposes a central flaw in how democracy is understood.

Opposing state authoritarianism is necessary, but it is not the full measure of democratic belief. Democracy is not defined by who you oppose. It is defined by whose rights you are willing to defend, especially when doing so unsettles tradition.

Pakistan’s Constitution is clear on this point, even if public discourse often is not. Article 8 invalidates any law or custom inconsistent with fundamental rights. Article 9 guarantees the right to life and liberty, which courts have repeatedly interpreted to include dignity and autonomy. Article 14 explicitly protects human dignity and privacy. Most critically, Article 25(3) allows the state to make special provisions for the protection of women and children.

These clauses were not added as decoration. They reflect an understanding that societies do not always protect their most vulnerable members on their own. That is why constitutional democracies exist in the first place.

This legal logic has been reinforced by Pakistan’s courts. In Shehla Zia v. WAPDA, the Supreme Court expanded the meaning of the right to life beyond mere survival, linking it to quality of life and human dignity. In Suo Motu Case No. 1 of 2004 (regarding child custody and welfare), the Court reaffirmed that the welfare of the child overrides custom, tradition, and adult interest. More recently, courts have consistently held that consent, agency, and age are not negotiable concepts when children are involved.

Against this backdrop, the defense of child marriage as a form of protest or cultural resistance collapses. When laws meant to prevent harm to minors are dismissed as “attacks on faith” or “Western interference,” children are turned into political instruments. This is not dissent. It is moral evasion.

I recall a conversation years ago in Karachi, sitting in a modest living room, the ceiling fan rattling as it struggled against the heat. Someone argued, earnestly, that restricting child marriage was a cultural betrayal. The argument was fluent, even emotional. What was missing was the child herself. Not as a symbol, but as a person. Her fear, her lack of consent, her future were never mentioned. She existed only as an idea—useful for argument, invisible as a human being.

That absence tells us everything.

The debate is often framed as a choice between an overreaching state and an authentic society. This framing is dishonest. When the state fails and society refuses self-correction, it is women, children, and minorities who are left unprotected. Karachi knows this reality well. When formal law recedes, informal authority steps in. Elders decide. Honor replaces consent. Power flows downward, unchecked.

Rejecting all state intervention in the name of tradition is not neutrality. It is alignment—with those who already hold power.

Human rights cannot be defended in pieces. You cannot oppose censorship while excusing control over bodies. You cannot condemn dictatorship in uniform while defending dictatorship at home. If coercion only offends you when it is exercised against you, then your objection is not to oppression itself, but to its direction.

This is where much of Pakistan’s democratic rhetoric falters. It is angry at authority, but not committed to liberty. It resists domination selectively. Democracy becomes transactional: valid when useful, negotiable when inconvenient.

The true test of democratic belief is uncomfortable because it demands surrendering power we consider natural—over daughters, over children, over tradition—rather than only challenging power imposed from above. It asks whether freedom is a principle or a tactic.

The question, then, is not who is speaking against which institution. That is political theatre. The real question is quieter and more revealing: Who are you standing for when no one is forcing you to? The individual with agency, or the tradition that demands obedience? The child with a future, or the ideology that needs a symbol?

In Karachi, and across Pakistan, democracy will remain incomplete until it travels inward as confidently as it travels upward. Until we apply the language of rights not just to the state, but to ourselves. Until freedom is no longer selective.

Only then will democracy stop being a slogan—and start becoming a practice.