Nearly a decade ago I returned from my last trip to Britain. One of the things that struck me as odd was the remarkable uniformity of architecture. When I asked some historians and town planners, they told me that this was due to the destruction of the second world war and the subsequent reconstruction. I found the answer unsatisfactory because in the first instance the destruction was not so wide spread as to engulf the entire island and in the second instance because I was seeing the country half a century after the war and that was a long enough duration for several buildings and houses to have been replaced and/or rebuilt.
The formalism of dress and the way in which fashions took the society by storm leading to a uniformity in attire, demeanor and norms also suggested that there was some kind of regimentation. This in a society that claimed both, to be pluralistic and to promote individualism as opposed to Oriental social conformity, was a challenge to the popular perception of Britain. Since then I have been absorbed by the need to observe and analyze forms of individualism in Oriental and Occidental societies.
A popular saying in Pakistan suggests that while Orientals will eliminate their enemies, Occidentals will change the nature of their opponents. Although I do not subscribe to this view, I feel that in the matter of individualism and individuality the attitudes of the east and west are as divergent as suggested above. Whereas Orientals tend to enforce social conformity in the fundamentals of relationships but tolerate them in personal choices that relate to the individual, Occidentals tolerate inconformity in human dealings but enforce social norms of behavior and insist on conformity in procedures for human interaction.
Thus only the despotism of the west is acceptable while the Oriental despot in anathema, western democracy is kosher but eastern methods of gauging public opinion are flawed, and even the expressions of the concerns of an oriental society within a democratic system is unworthy of the civilized man. Codes of conduct in the public arena are strictly observed but codes imposed by families or closed community systems, which are alien to the sociology of European society in general and the specific country to which the situation relates in particular, are not only to be ignored but rather they are to be flouted. The Oriental on the other hand will excuse and tolerate the alien culture, but is likely to enforce the rules of the family, the immediate society and any other social unit which is designated as a watershed.
In a comity of peers and at the most formal of social functions, which is not an imitation or offshoot of a western norm, we will find as great a variety in Pakistan, or for that matter in any other Oriental society, as one could imagine, this would be virtually unheard of in the west. I suppose the form of my discourse may also be abnormal for those who are used to the western style of English but I hope that there were some Pakistani readers who could sympathize with the form as well as the content.
Formally this is the last of my blogs related to the Pakistani Samaj tehreek. I have yet to post four blogs in the period before 14 August 2021. From then on I hope to continue with qadirkhurram.com but it will be a web page related to my other written and oral expression. In these four posts I will wind up the discourse on the Tehreek and set the stage for my other musings which I hope to post by the end of the year for which the page is currently active and see if it needs to be kept alive wen the next Ramzan comes around.