Pakistanis are essentially people of community. Which means that generally their life is a function of the communal identity considered most relevant by an individual within any given context. Since there are several communal identities to which an ordinary Pakistani will subscribe, the individual’s social identity cuts across communities to create complex structures of unity in diversity and an integrated parochialism. Thus the baradri and zat may dominate one issue, occupation and cohabitation may be more germane for another while provincial and ideological issues such as religion and political philosophy may be the basis of some other communal identities that divide Pakistan’s society. On the other hand zat and baradri may unite people across the country despite strong local, provincial, religious, political and occupational conflicts of interest. Similarly, any one of the other communal dividers, whether parochial or ideological, may provide the bond that is used to gain access to a source of so called “nepotism” in Pakistani society.
These divisive integrators provide the basis of trust and management for almost all social, political and administrative processes in Pakistan. Unfortunately, on the other side of the coin, almost all social political and administrative theories and ideologies employed by the intelligentsia of Pakistan refuse to acknowledge the viability of communal identities within the modern state system. Modern theories of the Social Sciences blame Pakistani communalism for the failure of the state mechanism in politics, administrative corruption, and poor performance in the field of “human development”. No doubt the cause for their failure is grounded in communalism so far as Pakistan is concerned, however, the fruit of this failure could not have ripened but for the staunch and adamant refusal of the social scientists to acknowledge that any political culture caught between parallel value-systems must fail. Nor would it have been so bitter if social scientists had realized that in case of an impasse between culture and education, it must be education which will have to adapt, if progress is to be made at a rate which is faster than natural evolution.
When the Europeans were colonizing the world, they were well aware of the fact that the foundations of society were different in the east as compared to the west. Their analysts were cognizant of the fact that imperatives of the cultural construct of societies must be taken as a dominant factor for reconstructing history. In recent years a movement, called indigenization by some and decolonization by others, has tried to rectify the imbalance caused by dominance of a Germanic-Nordic, analytical epistemology. A unisex and uni-culture society is being envisioned as the human norm. Good governance has been linked to democracy. Good governance, it is believed, is possible only with a ‘good democracy’. Freedom of speech, accountability and participatory decision making, can’t exist without democracy; and the only form of justifiable communal pride is nationalism.
Marxism had failed to take into account the natural human desire to gain more through greater effort. However, perhaps its fatal flaw was that it failed to realize that the needs of society demand some functions of life which are never tolerable for all. Consequently, a few jobs are going to be generally distasteful and must therefore be performed by those who are disempowered or, in other words, those who do not have any other choice. The best a society may achieve is to minimize social stratification and disempowerment of the individual or an entire community and even this is asking for the moon. Thus the pleasant human functions will be valued more; this creates a hierarchy within the society.
Even if a hierarchy, which carries more privileges or need less effort is not transmitted from generation to generation, some people will be more empowered than others in any society. In fact, social justice demands that one who contributes more to society or has a greater capability must be more empowered than one who refuses to accept responsibility or fails to contribute to society even if the cause for failure is a physical disability. Failing this we will deprive people of the incentive to contribute more than the weakest member of society or its lowest contributor. It would be better to reward the greater contributors according to a just share and provide moral incentives for their voluntary donation to the cause of those who are unable to compete in contributing as much to society.
In essence this implies that social inequality has two aspects, firstly a just distribution of the social benefits according to social gains and second the unequal opportunities offered by life. The first is just and the second is unjust though inevitable but may be mitigated to some extent through social, political, moral/religious and administrative means. Justice on both counts is the essence of good governance and politics must ensure this through any means possible. That is to say; politics influences government, religion, society, state and administration. So long as society ensures just rewards for service, without detriment to equal opportunity of service it has served its purpose by ensuring good governance.
It is important to remember that neither an individual, nor society as a whole, is interested in giving up time from trade or leisure to participate in executive, legislative or judicial functions in the normal course of life. In fact through historic evolution, and the greatest human social innovation, division of labour, ordinary human beings liberated themselves from these activities and chose, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, to give up some part of the fruit of their daily labour in the form of taxes, in order to get others to take charge of these functions. This is not to say that sometimes, societies have not been forced to surrender power by aggressors who used force to usurp their rights.
There seems to be little doubt that human life, even that of a misanthrope needs society to develop. An individual performing the most basic tasks of living may be able to find time for leisure and to relax. However, any attempt to improve upon basics without recourse to other humans or the knowledge they have generated over the millennia will require both a great intellect as well as a long span of spare time. In Marxian terms this would be capital or an accumulation of labour. Now, like the proverbial farmer whose need for a wife led to a series of wants for each want, as soon as a human being acquires a society [even if it be only a society of two] culture, justice, economics and politics enter the equation.
Here culture comes before all because merely the process of being human, creates culture in us, when there are two or more of us, each has a personal culture that has some distinct aspect. This variety of culture demands justice even when an entire society has a common collective culture. Adjudication is needed if individual cultures clash; whether the clash is physical, metaphysical and para-physical (emotional). From such clashes, economic and political aspects of life are born. The economic essentially relates to the apportionment of time and the distribution of labour in its many forms and levels and is firmly rooted in the physical. While all human life begins with culture, it must, create an administration and politics, not in creating a polis [city] essentially but in mechanisms of social interaction to determine concepts such as justice, economy or administrative norms.
Human society has discovered unity in diversity and diversity in unity, single solutions for multiple problems and multiple solutions for a single problem. The most fascinating aspect of human nature is that several different, often conflicting actions and behaviours are equally normal for mankind. Thus the need to dominate is as natural as the need to be sheltered and dominated, the need to excel is as natural as the need to get out of the lime light and the emotions of loving and caring are as natural as hating and destroying. The art of coexistence developed by other animals before homo-sapiens may not have been as sophisticated as it is today but history has recorded several methods which, on unbiased scrutiny may have been more delicately balanced than democracy.
Since there are often conflicts of interest even within an individual, conflict of communal interests is almost inevitable in a society. Within themselves, normal individuals are able to create a sequential balance between conflicting interests or they are able to rationalize it for themselves in some way. However, when it is conflict of interest with others, some kind of adjustment is required, especially if coexistence is inevitable. Adjustments may take one or more of several forms. The most dissociative form is to agree to disagree and go in separate ways on a particular issue; the most accommodating is for one party to decide to take a subordinate role. Between these, there are the options of synthesizing or aggregating interests, agreeing to follow in one issue if given leadership in another.
The option of postponing a decision to build support, arguments or a database to evaluate viability of a standpoint is of course the ultimate political maneuver barring subterfuge or diplomacy to mislead the opponent. In any event some part of individuality is sacrificed for coexistence, compromise and consensus. Social harmony is the fruit of compromise or consensus not of democracies and majorities unless most people loose individuality or have hopes of redressing the balance through sequential dominance at a future date.
If we wish to assess the dynamics of Pakistan’s political culture, we need to know what part of modern traditions have taken root by now and assess which previous traditions are still active in society; because today we have a mongrel political culture. In my view, we need to assess the following aspects of our political history.
POSSIBLE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL CULTURE
- In recent history, can we see a change in local body politics
- Has there been any social integration within local communities
- Has there been any actual devolution of power as a result of multiple seats of different categories
- Can we see any reduction in biradri control over electoral affiliations
- Are there any new kinds of groups emerging in voting alignments
- How many members of the decision making machinery of active Political Parties in various District belong to influential families of the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.
- What measures may a person adopt to get a foothold in politics