The Pakistani Nation! Who are they? What manner of people are these? I first asked this question from myself about the same time as I consciously asked myself who am I? Back then, I was a failed student of Intermediate [F. Sc pre-engineering], eighteen years of age. Having made a through mess of my studies, I finally felt the need to question myself and my environment; to fix the blame and make a plan of action. It was in the context of my role in my community, society and nation that I found myself at a loss because I did not know enough about the newly formed state and the age old Pakistani nation(s).
Somehow the question became part of the role that I wanted to acquire in life. It was the time when Ayub Khan was losing his grip on the government and college students were debating the merits and demerits of communism and capitalism, importance of languages as mediums of thought, the policies of apartheid and colonial impact on the Third World. It was a time when the Pakistani intellectuals dreamt of leading the Muslim world into an age of scientific development, economic prosperity and ideological brilliance. I could not see myself as a politician and I was apprehensive that as a journalist or writer my thought could be trivialized as fictional or biased; so I decided to be a teacher of economics.
During the decade of the 70’s, after the East Pakistan debacle, we went through several stages of hope and dismay as a nation. However, the ‘revised’ geography and polity led to the special significance of the Pakistani territory which was now confined to the Indus Enclave. The identity of the Indus region as distinct from India was known to the Arabs who always wrote of “al-Hind wa as-Sind” as a unitary-divided entity. It was also known to actors on the stage of history before and after the Arabs. However, the significance that it acquired after the creation of Bangladesh was very poignant for an aspiring historian like me [as I had shifted to history from economics]; and remained so for decades.
Within this quest for national identity was hidden a quest for personal identity and search for my political posture and moral conscience. Primarily there were three questions that I needed to answer: Foremost was the question whether we are a nation or merely a state that had imposed a straight-jacket over its polity to create an enforced nationhood. If we are a nation, what is the place of religion in our construct? This is the great debate that derives from the statements of the Quaid, some of which are construed to mean that he envisioned a secular state while others suggest that it was an Islamic model that he had visualized. The third question could only be answered in the context of the other two. Do we than, have a future of prosperity and a venerable position in the comity of nations.
Naturally these questions did not crystallize immediately, so it took me some time to find the means for answering them. As I love traveling, my first and easiest option was to be a tourist in Pakistan and see as much of it as I could. After I acquired my passport in 1987, I started looking for opportunities to visit places with which our forefathers had historic links, and speculate on how we differ from people like the Iranians, Afghans, Uzbeks and Turkmen on one side of our borders and the Hindus and Sikhs on the other side. This was my first string. On my first trip to Iran, in 1996, I went to a public call office to telephone my mother. On the way back, around 11 pm, I saw a young woman who was playing with her child in a public park without fear of being teased. I thought to myself ‘I wish women in Pakistan could do the same’. Then it occurred to me that I had never been in a park so late at night; and so I decided that on my return to Multan, where I was teaching then, I would visit its two major parks, one in the cantonment and one in the city.
To my utter surprise the parks were full of people, families, lone men, lone women, a few women and men in pairs or groups as friends, not family. Since then, every time I return to Pakistan from a foreign journey, I compare a remarkable experience during my travels with the conditions in Pakistan. Over the years, it has almost become second nature for me to study Pakistani society when I go out of my house. Being a Johnny nobody who has been fed stories from Muslim history and English literature, it should have occurred to me earlier that this was an ideal medium of observation. After all Mamun Rashid used to go out in the streets of Baghdad as an ordinary citizen to see how his subjects were doing. Anyhow, for me the revelation came in the streets of Shiraz, north of Baghdad.
Since some providence had pushed my learning path into the bylines of Muslim history in South Asia, a third avenue of inquiry was through my subject: the study of history. Most of the available knowledge of history is about states and governments; as such a study of Persian literature was an essential adjunct. A quarter of a century of collecting fragments of information led me to a reconstruction of history of settled life in the Indus Enclave from its earliest villages, 7000 years ago, till the creation of Pakistan. Unfortunately, this is a fairly tedious and stilted statement which needs great effort to read.
The contents of this book are the result of my raag teen-taal for a Pakistani symphony. A teen-taal has a fourth step [in its 16 beats] which is called the Khali. This empty portion is my speculation, cogitation and interpolation regarding the temperament of Pakistanis as a people and will underlay the three sections of this book. The first section deals with our history and the three sources of culture that form our current national character. Next is a discussion on social and communal forms in Pakistan today and the disconnections between them. The third section is the corollary of disconnections between society, state and governance; it reviews our successes and failures as a nation. The sections represent tangible answers to the three primary questions [referred above] that have haunted me.
The section on history addresses two kinds of issues under the titles: Yad-i-mazi [Hafiz] and Jo suna afsana tha [Maghlub Muslim].
Yad-i-mazi derives its title from the verse: yad-i-mazi azaab hai yaro, koi cheen lay mujh say hafza mera. It seems to me that some sections of our intellectuals are embarrassed by our past. These people can be subcategorized as: those whose memory of history consists of events in which the Muslims do not conform to teachings of Islam and its established codes of morality; and those who believe that it was the abysmal human development of non-European nations which led to their subjugation and colonization. In either case, they prefer to blot out this past from their memory. The word hafiz, given in brackets, stands for ‘one who memorizes’ [especially the Quran] and is a euphemism for a ‘blind person’. The reader may decide who is blind and what is worthy of being memorized. Since Hafiz Shirazi, the Persian poet was a reviver of Islamic and Persian traditions; the word may also serve as a reminder of the beauty and sophistication of our Iranian links.
Jo Suna afsana tha is part of Ghalib’s couplet: vai nadani kay waqt-i-marg yeh sabit hua, khwab tha jo kuch kay dekha jo suna afsana tha. It alludes to the ‘stories’ we have heard in the name of history, especially in English. Ghalib, of course, is pointing to visions of the hereafter, and therefore the antonym Maghlub, defeated/overpowered has replaced the name Ghalib, victorious/dominant. The object is to place our historic past in perspective so that its mystique and romance isn’t damaged but the misconceptions, which embarrass our intellectuals, making them apologetic about our past and apologists of our traditions are removed. A great portion of them relate to Islam in theory and in action.
The section on social and communal forms in our Pakistani will share the title of the book and will represent the thoughts of the “Sheikh Multani”. This pretentious identity derives from the great Sheikh Saadi Shirazi who could not come to Multan to spread his pearls of wisdom due to old age when he was invited there. Since I did most of my thinking in that city, I thought of acknowledging my debt to my great teachers – the citizens of Multan. It is a lengthy section with no parts as such; however it does have in three sub-themes. First, the qualities and norms that characterize Pakistani society; second, the corpus and nature of our knowledge of these people, with a set of options for improvement; and third, state and governance issues and how we may proceed to a bright and prosperous future.
The third section, like the first, contains two parts. One deals with the foreign barrage of ideas that have eroded the self-esteem of the elite, both traditional and modern, ever since the colonial occupation by Britain. The second with the actual damage that has been done to those who have controlled the reigns of our government from the time the British left.
The first part dealing with the direct foreign influence is “doo takay ka bail”, contributed by the “Thug”. This title addresses popular modern slogans that are often used to trick the common Pakistani into believing that our culture is flawed. The heading is derived from a children’s story that tells of the sale of a prize bull for two takay [a small unit of money in times gone by]. In the story a group of presentable and impressive confidence artists [con-artists or thugs] convince the farmer that the priceless bull is only worth two takas.
The second part in this section, entitled ‘Parhay likhay’, addresses Pakistani intellectuals. The idea originated in a slogan for promoting education which read ‘paanch jamaatain parh jain gay tow ban jaain gay insan achchay’ [if they have received education of five classes they will become good humans] and the oft quoted criticism of social behavior which suggests that a “parha likha” person should have good manners and social graces. It asks questions and raises issues that are of interest to the “mainstream” educated people of Pakistan. Being an “agnostic” [one who knows not] for axioms that govern mainstream intellectual, my status is that of a “Nadan” because I found that the following couplet of Shakil Badauni applied to my perceptions regarding the Pakistanis
Is darja badguman hain khulus-i-bashar say ham
Apnon ko dekhtay hain parai nazar say ham
I first realized how true it was for my vision of Pakistan when I returned from Iran and went to the Pakistani parks in 1996. Over the decades, since then, I have learnt to look at the possibility of an alternate paradigm that governs the life of ordinary Pakistanis. There is a distinct rationale behind our behavior patterns which operates on principles that suit our temperament. The average Pakistani is low key and low profile, no frills and make-do kind of person who has a variety of communal loyalties to balance. This person aspires to be ji dar and laj pal, often avoiding interaction in cases of conflict but unwilling to be suppressed. Consequently, a Pakistani will frequently search, and find an alternate path when pressed by the state or a non-communal authority. They will rather make way than make waves; but not on demand or command! That is when they become taciturn. One consequence of this, however, is that we will also abstain from taking issue with any attempted defiance of state or governmental authority.