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Napoleon Bonaparte once said about Prussia: ” The army had a state, not the other way around. The state didn’t own the army. The army owned the state.” In Pakistan, add bureaucracy as well.
That’s the idea.
The British ruled India.
They came to India and destroyed whatever state structure was growing. Then they built two things in its place: the military and the bureaucracy. And they kept both institutions completely outside democratic control. No checks. No parliament. Nothing.
The British made the subcontinent’s army and bureaucracy more powerful than their own back in Britain. That was deliberate. Why? Because the job was different. In Britain, the army’s job was to uphold civilian supremacy. In the subcontinent, the job was to protect the British Raj. That meant subjugating millions of people. You can’t do that with a weak army. So, the British gave them enormous power. And kept parliament out of it.
The British left. And with them went the last check on the army and bureaucracy’s authority — the British crown. After 1947, there was no one above them. They became the most powerful class in the country. And they’ve stayed that way.
Today, people over-glorify the bureaucracy. Why? Because it gives them power over other people. That’s the only reason. Not service. Not competence. Not vision. Just the sweet, rotten thrill of lording over someone else. They still believe they are above the state. Above the people. Above the law.
We’re living in the era of TikTok. And what do you see? A thousand wannabe bureaucrats lip-syncing in formals, making reels about their CSS dreams, obsessed with being one of the top class. The uniform. The car. The way people jump when you walk in. That’s the fantasy. Not fixing anything. Just being someone.
And intellectually?
You want to prepare 12 subjects? Go ahead. Memorize. Vomit on paper. Repeat. Congratulations, you’ve trained your brain to be a cheap hard drive.
We produce thousands of “brilliant” CSS officers every year who have never had an original thought in their lives. Their idea of critical thinking is deciding which color pen to use.
So, I ask you: with all this “potential,” why have we not produced a single Nobel laureate in science? Why no world-changing IT experts? Why no new billionaires building something from scratch? Why do we keep celebrating the same recycled names from forty years ago?
Because we are still in the slave mentality. The master left. But we kept the leash. And now we fight over who gets to hold it.
