Well I missed a post, but then that is likely to be a fairly normal occurrence from here in on. I have no intention of being regular with the twice a week blog because I have reached the end of the discourse on The Pakistani Samaj Tehreek soliloquy. From now on the posts will be primarily of the qadirkhurram.com variety. Ideas on social, political and religious issues that I have developed and my work in history will be posted either as links or as essays; posts will hopefully be at least once a week but they will be sporadic.
Meanwhile, to close the discourse on the Pakistani Samaj, I have chosen to present a brief concept note. Anyone interested in a follow-up may kindly contact me by email. One of my few readers once asked me what was the difference between the blog and the articles page. So, the blogs, I had hoped would be of common interest and easy to read but the articles were meant to be more elaborate and needing some concentration. Perhaps I did not succeed in either because I am now primarily a researcher. That is why the concepts that I have expressed in this post relate to a research project on the Pakistani Samaj.
I believe that the four lifestyles that I mentioned in my posts [nomadic, pastoral, rural, and urban] need to be studied as watersheds. However, since the nomadic community is now very small and rather quaint, it may be studied by anthropologists under a separate scheme or by policy research institutes which focus on the practical aspects of dealing with them by government or civil society. That leaves the pastoral, agrarian or rural, and urban. The rural may be an artisan community or agro-pastoral as well.
I have referred to the “from crisis to crisis” nature of Pakistani history. These crises range from political and economic issues, International situations and global issues to natural disasters such as floods, famine and earthquakes. The solutions to each can lie at the national level or depend on personal initiative, but I think that the most effective solutions are those which pivot on the communal life of the Pakistanis whether they depend on governmental initiatives or civil society activism. Naturally the intellectual exercise needed for the success of these initiatives or protocols must come from academicians and must be based on a sound understanding of social values, ideological moorings, religious sanctions and conceptual clarity.
Matters in which age, sex, religion or education do not affect the rights, duties and privileges of individuals, such as medical care and clean water etc. will need a more uniform treatment on the part of the state but even here, the communal contexts may vary and will have to be factored in. For this reason, the researcher who takes up the study of Pakistani Samaj, whether as an individual or as part of a team, will have to keep in mind the communal contexts as a matrix of the geographic range [settlement size and form], economic scope [in lifestyle and occupation category] and form [regular income such as salaried employees and irregular income such as shopkeepers, manufacturers or traders] and scale [large medium or small].
The research should, in my view, be formulated to take into account the range of demography in terms of sex and age; as well as the communal interface with society and state. Thus, from an aged male to a male child, and from a female child to aged woman, residing in a village or town or city from a particular ethnicity and occupation group should be of interest in the cross section of communal relationships that the person is committed to. This context should then be studied in terms of its interface with society and the state.
What, for example are the expectations of various rural communities from the state. Is there a consistent political issue that has to be addressed regardless of the ideological or conceptual divide between political parties. How do these communities see themselves as contributing to the national existence and what are the aspects of national life that they feel they need to address as communities, which they expect the state and/or the society to cater to and which they feel must be left as open choices for individuals. The laborers and the artisans, employees and employers, professions and skilled personnel, whether of a government organization or the private sector, belonging to different socio-economic carders. These are the people who must be focusses as entities forming communities from the local to national and even international level.
I will close this monolog here and will Insha Allah follow it up as a dialogue with anyone whose interest is aroused enough to contact me. The next post will Insha Allah be on some other subject. Lets see what?