Anum Aftab

Scrambled Notions

Let’s not loose the roots of our identity. Cling onto them before it’s too late. 

It seems like Pakistan, as a country has lost its essence. The very foundation of this country was "La Illaha Il-Allah" but with the growing cultural adversity due to outsourcing of TV channels it seems like we've lost that innocence we possessed. A country that was once just a boundary on the map is now the centre of every main headline. During the past ten years, Pakistan has become a totally different place than what I remember of it at least…

Culture is embossed in human psyche to direct individuals’ feelings and actions. Material aspects of culture are its technology, instruments of economic production, consumption and household goods. Non-material are beliefs, values, norms, laws, symbols, religion, literature, arts and folklore, and morals. We are in a state of confusion about values and ethics. A crack runs through Pakistan’s national and regional cultures, which requires us to review our unconcealed assumptions about culture and society.

Socially and culturally Pakistan is not the country that it was in 1947, 1960 or in the 1970s and 80s. It is no longer a predominantly agricultural country. Almost every rural household has one or more members working, studying, and living away in cities. Despite grinding poverty for about a third of the population, materially and economically Pakistanis are three times better off now in constant per capita income than they were in 1947. Pakistan has taken to material modernization readily.

In May 2011, Pakistan boasted 118 million mobile phone subscribers. Even videos and the TV-smashing Taliban have no hesitation in using cell phones, western medicine, FM radio stations, dollars and rockets. Similarly, motorized vehicles have transformed even in the village life where agriculture has been largely commercialized.

In Pakistan, something more is happening. Its culture is not only lagging but is actively moving towards orthodox Islamic mores. Here lies the quandary: Pakistan’s material culture is modernizing and non-material culture is Islamising. Islamisation in Pakistan has been a process of inventing traditions. Islamisation cultivates notions of right and wrong based on women’s segregation, religious observances, sexuality, personalized evidence, retributory justice and demonstrable piety. Yet, urban living requires impersonal organizations, trust of others, women’s participation, and freedom of expression, individual rights, empirical logic and transparency. The result is that the values and norms that we espouse, offer little guidance for the behaviors necessitated by our material and urban ways of living. We are in a state of moral conflict.

The divergence between our lived culture and imagined culture is turning into a gaping chasm. Islamisation of narratives has diverted the public discourse and channeled social energies into reinforcing the imagined culture. It diverts us to moral discourses that do not conform to the lived reality of our urban livelihoods.

Pakistanis urgently need alternative narratives that may compete dialogically with the orthodox Islamic thought. But it is not just the narratives that will bring the imagined culture in line with the lived culture. There has to be social movements for tolerance, rationality, freedom to think, cultural diversity, and gender equality. It is not an easy task. It will take the form of long drawn out influence and political struggles in streets, schools, the media and homes for the Pakistani mind. It has to begin by wresting the self-assumed ‘Fatwa’ authority from the Mullahs.

By: Anum Aftab