dawn.com.pk, Nadeem F. Paracha, Sunday, 18 Oct, 2009
There’s a telling photograph accompanying columnist Salman Masood’s article on the Kerry-Lugar Bill in the October 8 issue of New York Times. The piece is on how Pakistanis have been reacting to the supposedly controversial aid bill.
There was nothing new about the reactions that Masood gathered, with most of the respondents dishing out the usual top-of-mind rhetoric about ‘sovereignty’ and all that, but it was the picture that was worth a thousand, nay, a million words. It showed two trendy young men sitting with the plastic replica of Rodney McDonald outside a McDonald’s joint in Islamabad. According to Masood, both men vehemently opposed the bill, saying that it ‘undermines Pakistan’s sovereignty’.
The picture is a classic case of the stinging socio-political contradiction that Pakistan has become. Its people and politicians, its army and holy men can be seen lovingly engaging with the most ubiquitous symbols, gadgets and concepts of what we all instantly ridicule as ‘western materialism/imperialism’, and yet without even blinking for a second, many Pakistanis can be expected to roll out high and mighty examples of thoughtless oratory about political and cultural sovereignty.
Follow up:
My question is: if we aren’t sovereign, then exactly what does a politically and culturally sovereign Pakistan really mean? This question is bound to bag numerous different answers. And that should be expected in the diverse ethnic and sectarian milieu of Pakistan. This diversity is yet to be recognised by the state and its society, that strives rather unsuccessfully to define and defend Pakistan’s identity as a cohesive and singular whole, constantly dragging in religion believing it to be the glue that could hold the centre of this ideological singularity.
But it hasn’t. Because the religion has many sects and sub-sects, and each sect has its own take on the religion’s traditions and rituals. It is vital that to keep tensions between these sects at a minimum, governments and the state, as well as the hyper electronic media, stop dragging religion out of peoples’ homes and into public sphere.
Let’s, for once and for all, resign to the fact that there is one God, but there most certainly is not one faith. The more this reality remains inside the privacy of homes, the better. Otherwise, Pakistanis of various sects and sub-sects will not only continue judging the validity and authenticity of each other’s faith, they will clash with the cohesive version of the religion that the state of Pakistan has been peddling for years now.
Sovereignty, like charity, begins at home. We delude ourselves and glorify our importance by constantly suggesting how powerful nations are so interested in Pakistan; as if Pakistan is all that is discussed by their politicians, army generals, think-tanks and economists. Conspiracy theorists, fringe politicians, mullahs, Islamists and the chattering classes put us at the centre of the universe, around which malicious superpowers constantly hatch conspiracies and schemes to destabilise our wonderful Islamic republic.
The truth is rather simple, really. The above is merely a mirage; a feel-good (and yet paranoid) projection, splashed to obscure the many state level and social failures this unfortunate republic has been suffering in the name of religion, patriotism and, of course, sovereignty. On what basis do we demand sovereignty? What do we have to deserve it?
Many would turn around and instantly remind you that we are a nuclear power. If so, then perhaps we are only slightly better than the isolationist, poverty-stricken and repressive North Korea. Well then the bomb’s all we have, and as an acute case of collective neurosis, we so passionately worship our ‘fathers of the bomb’, a devise that can wipe out whole populations and countries.
Where are the schools, hospitals, a welfare system, political stability, a robust democracy, a healthy economy, and a life free of sectarian and religious strife, bigotry, bloodshed and hatred? We are all prisoners of certain delusions—about ourselves and about the many countries that we believe are constantly scheming against us. We refuse to free ourselves from these paranoid, self-serving apparitions and yet we demand sovereignty from the nefarious designs of our many (largely imagined) enemies. The enemy is us.
Each one of us is to be blamed. Once we manage to openly recognise and confess our own shortcomings, our journey to a sovereign state based on religious tolerance, economic progress and political plurality shall begin. Till then all we can do is to keep hugging our bomb and raise our bony fists in a delusional exhibition of empty triumph and hysterical paranoia.
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