The Echo of Unity in a Broken Bar

The killing of Vehari lawyer Muhammad Zeeshan Dhudhi should have united Pakistan’s legal community in a singular, principled roar. Instead, it exposed the uncomfortable truth lawyers rarely admit publicly but feel privately every day: the bar today is divided not only by political affiliation, but by class, privilege, and the quiet elitism that determines whose suffering is worthy of outrage and whose is not.

In the immediate aftermath of Zeeshan’s killing, the response from the wider legal fraternity was strangely muted. Court strikes were observed, the ritualistic formality expected whenever a lawyer is harmed, but the strikes felt hollow, as though performed out of habit rather than conviction. There was noise, but no real pressure. And the government acted accordingly: it did nothing. No urgency, no decisive statements, no high-level intervention. It was business as usual because the protest, fragmented and distracted by partisan loyalties, lacked the moral force it should have carried.

For days, many lawyers remained more concerned about aligning with their political patrons than standing with their own wounded fraternity. Some high-profile figures hesitated to anger party leaderships. Others seemed uncomfortable confronting the provincial government at all. In that hesitation, that failure to stand together, the bar revealed just how deeply politics now occupies the space once reserved for solidarity.

But then something changed.

When the Multan High Court Bar Association’s president, long associated with the ruling party, publicly broke ranks, left the PML(N), and demanded the Chief Minister’s resignation, the political equation shifted overnight. Suddenly the government appeared awake. Administrative action followed. Officers were suspended. Meetings were held. Statements were issued. The system that had been indifferent began to move, not because the moral weight of Zeeshan’s death had finally struck the conscience of those in power, but because the lawyers had finally spoken in one voice loud enough to be heard.

Zeeshan Dhudhi’s death is a tragedy. But it can also be a turning point. If the bar chooses unity over division, solidarity over silence, and principle over politics, then his death will not only haunt the legal community it will strengthen it. And perhaps the bar will reclaim something it has long been losing: its dignity, its authority, and its moral courage.

This is the most painful lesson of this tragedy: justice came into motion not when a lawyer was killed, but when lawyers became united enough to threaten political cost.

That should trouble us deeply.

At the same time, when district bar members rallied, marched, and spoke fiercely for Zeeshan, the elite circle of corporate-firm lawyers and prestigious law school graduates remained conspicuously absent. No petitions, statements, or coordinated actions emerged from their side, even though the same group is usually quick to mobilise around constitutional amendments, judicial debates, or the arrest of someone from their own social and educational sphere

Their silence was deafening and shameful.

These are the lawyers who speak fluent English, whose careers are polished by elite institutions, whose social media feeds brim with commentary on abstract legal philosophy, judicial restructuring, and institutional balance. They are vocal when democracy is threatened, when constitutional litigation is fashionable, or when one of their own faces arrest. But when a district lawyer from Vehari is killed, a man working at the margins of the profession, away from glass offices and appellate courts, they become suddenly, and suspiciously, quiet.

The implicit message is unmistakable: some lives ignite their outrage; others do not.

For a profession that claims to defend equality before the law, this selective empathy is a crisis of integrity. If lawyers cannot extend the same dignity to a colleague from a tehsil court as they do to one from a prestigious chamber, then the bar is no longer a community, it is a hierarchy masquerading as one.

And yet, moments like these are also opportunities.

Zeeshan’s killing , and the fractured, belated, politically complicated response that followed, should force a reckoning within the bar. Lawyers must ask themselves what kind of community they want to be. Do they want a fraternity where unity appears only in moments of political convenience? Or do they want a profession strong enough to rise above the parties they vote for, the chambers they belong to, the law schools on their CVs?

Because the truth is simple: when lawyers stand together, governments tremble. When they stand divided, governments ignore them.

Unity is not a sentimental ideal, it is the only real source of power the bar has ever possessed. The Lawyers’ Movement succeeded not because lawyers had perfect politics, but because they had a collective purpose. The bar spoke as one voice; the state had no choice but to listen.

That unity has since been lost, traded away in small increments for political alignment, social prestige, and class comfort. This tragedy reveals the cost of that fragmentation: a lawyer had to die, and the state only acted when the bar briefly rediscovered the strength of its unity.

But unity cannot be episodic. It cannot return only when the stakes are unbearable. It must be rebuilt consciously, across political lines, across class divides, across educational backgrounds.

Elite lawyers must understand that their privilege obliges them to show up for their most vulnerable colleagues, not only for causes that reflect well on them, or that affect their own circles. District bar members must also resist the temptation to reduce elite silence to permanent antagonism; bridges must be built, not burned.

And bar leadership must stop treating political expediency as a substitute for collective purpose. A bar president should not need to resign from a party to defend a colleague’s dignity, but if

such a resignation becomes necessary to unify the profession, it should be understood not as political drama but as a reminder that loyalty to the bar must supersede loyalty to any political party.

The legal profession has always stood tallest when it stood together. The dignity lawyers have lost in recent years, eroded by infighting, political factionalism, and elitist detachment, can be regained only if the bar recommits to the principle that every lawyer’s life, whether from an elite firm or a small district practice, is equally sacred.

Zeeshan Dhudhi’s death is a tragedy. But it can also be a turning point.

If the bar chooses unity over division, solidarity over silence, and principle over politics, then his death will not only haunt the legal community it will strengthen it.

And perhaps the bar will reclaim something it has long been losing: its dignity, its authority, and its moral courage.