[lg policy] Pakistan: Fearing diversity

Fri Dec 3 15:28:59 UTC 2010

Fearing diversity
by Nadeem F. Paracha on 12 2nd, 2010

December 4 is Sindh Culture Day. A day when the people of the Sindh
will celebrate the cultural heritage of the province.

Though this year’s celebrations are being organised by the Sindh
government headed by a Sindhi chief minister, interestingly, in
Karachi, celebrating and acknowledging the rich cultural history of
the province was (until the early 2000’s), the prerogative of the
city’s local government headed by the MQM – a party closest to the
Urdu-speaking mohajir majority of Karachi. Even this year the governor
of Sindh, a mohajir, is very much part of what has always turned out
to be a colourful event. But this blog is not quite about rightly
praising the overall ethnic unity that is displayed during such events
in Sindh. Instead, this piece is about how disturbing it is to still
find some people pointing out the ‘danger’ of highlighting the culture
of ethnicities through such events.

For example, those finding the celebration of Sindhi culture
‘dangerous,’ seem to be driven by the monolithic narrative that
although first formed in the 1950s, is still doing the rounds. What is
more concerning is that some young Pakistanis have fallen for it,
thinking that this narrative has something to do with ‘patriotism’.
This narrative first reared its clouded head in the shape of ‘One
Unit’ – when in 1955 the National Assembly (studded with
indirectly-elected bureaucrats and feudal lords) passed a bill merging
310,000 square miles (of what was then called West Pakistan) into a
single province, with Lahore as its provincial capital.

The wisdom behind this unprecedented move was to keep Pakistan intact.
The government and the state would have to begin peddling not only a
single monolithic concept of ‘Pakistaniat,’ but also of Islam.

The move clearly demonstrated just how fearful and insecure the elite
were with the concept of diversity and pluralism.

No world-weary, experienced and well-informed politician or leader
could be as conveniently short-sighted as were those men and women who
actually believed that by turning West Pakistan into a ‘one big happy
province’ would do away with all the ‘dangers’ of the treacherous
ethno-nationalism being posed by all the Sindhis, Baloch, Pashtuns and
above all, the Bengalis (of former East Pakistan).

However, the truth was that the detested ethno-nationalism was mostly
about certain ethnicities of the newly-formed country who were simply
questioning the state’s economic and political fairness, especially in
the event of these ethnicities blaming the state of being molded by
‘interests of the Punjabis’.

The logical move in this respect would have been for the state and the
ruling elite to have summoned a system that would help the country
naturally and systematically; to make all ethnicities feel that they
too had a political and economic voice and stakes in the running of
the country. A system that could have addressed the feeling of
alienation and neglect some ethnicities had begun to experience.

That system truly should have been representative democracy. But the
emergence of a convoluted theory like ‘One Unit’ proved that the
ruling elite was nowhere even close to thinking along democratic
lines.

The state rudely bypassed the positive political, economic and
cultural mobilisation that a democratically navigated ethnic diversity
can achieve for the well-being of the country and instead, turned the
ethnic diversity of Pakistan into something largely static and stuck
within the artificial parameters constructed by lofty but impractical
notions of statehood and faith.

Ethnicities with long cultural histories and languages were suddenly
asked to shed away their proud heritage and fall in line by adopting
concepts of nationhood formulated by men who had little or no clue
about the importance that these heritages played in the lives of many
Pakistanis.

As trouble began to brew – mainly among the Bengalis, Pushtuns and the
Baloch who were first to suspect such nationalistic notions as a way
for the ruling elite to monopolize the country’s politics and
economics – the 1956 Constitution was implemented.

Instead of working aggressively towards achieving representative
democracy and doing away with the One Unit system, this constitution
added another dimension to further fatten the concept – with religion.

In came faith. Meaning that from 1956 onwards, being a good, obedient
and loyal Pakistani not only meant keeping one’s ethnic make-up under
wraps, but to also following the concept of Islam dished out by the
state.

In other words, being a Pakistani was now about being someone who
should speak fluent Urdu (and English as a second language); who
should reject things like ethnic heritage as a thing of the past and
of useless tradition; who should scoff at the more indigenous and folk
versions of Islam as being backward, and adopt what the state
prescribes as real Islam.

The state continued to face wave upon wave of Baloch, Pushtun, Bengali
(and later) Sindhi resentment. But the more the state and ruling elite
failed to curb the deeply entrenched and rich ethnic sentiments and
traditions,  the more ‘Islam’ the state added to the One Unit
narrative.

Even the supposedly secular Ayub Khan dictatorship in the 1960s was
not immune in this respect. For example, the state-owned Radio
Pakistan was only allowed to play Urdu film songs and eastern
classical music. Very rarely, if ever, the then popular station
allowed playing a song that was not in Urdu (or English).

During the successful movement against the Ayub dictatorship
(1967-68), not surprisingly, the political forces that were most
active in the anti-Ayub movement did not really come from the
religious parties who had called him anti-Islam in the early 1960s.

On the contrary, the movement was mostly driven by secular and leftist
political groups. These groups also had a number of Pushtun, Baloch
and Bengali ethnic nationalists who had been harassed to no end by the
state ever since the 1950s.

_______________________________

Though the brief dictatorship of Yahya Khan did decide to undo the One
Unit, things were not to be so pleasant after all.

After doing away with the One Unit system, the state’s brand new enemy
became secular which it saw as the Ayub regime’s greatest folly. The
thinking now among the ruling elite was that had Ayub not alienated
the religious parties with considerable street power, these parties
could have been used to check the rise of leftist and
ethnic-nationalist opposition to the state.

Thus, ironically, in the face of the complete failure of concepts of
nationalism and faith peddled by the state, the state did eventually
turn towards the religious parties just before the historic 1970
elections.

The Yahya dictatorship is said to have invested considerable amounts
of money and resources into religious parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami
(JI) to achieve a hung parliament in which the state under the Army
would continue to play an influential role.

But the artificial nationalism that was enforced for so many years had
done quite the opposite of what it was first triggered to achieve. By
the end of the 1960s, Pakistan, instead of being a cohesive and united
country with one language and one faith, was a deeply fissured
society.

What was to be democratically harnessed, navigated and celebrated –
i.e., ethnic, religious and sectarian diversity – was insulted and
messed about via the One Unit, turning this diversity into a
multi-headed monster.

Even the victory of the left-liberal Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in
West Pakistan, and the Bengali nationalist Awami League (AL) in East
Pakistan during the 1970 elections wasn’t enough to reverse the damage
done by the games the state had played with deeply-held ethnic
traditions and heritages of a lot of Pakistanis.

The result was the utter collapse of the so-called ‘two nation theory’
(Pakistan for Muslims, India for the Hindus) upon which the founders
had formed the country. The bloody breakaway of Muslim East Pakistan
(that became Bangladesh) in 1971 sounded the final death knell in this
regard.

____________________________

It is surprising that the ruling elite just simply refused to
recognise the realities associated to nations heavily dotted by
diverse ethnicities, sects and religions. Though such diverse nations
have the potential to thrive under democracy, they will always be
immersed in a constant cycle of ethnic and sectarian conflict if
controlled and navigated through a singular concept of religion or
nationalism. Such is an illogical, reckless and an unnatural act in a
country brimming with ethnic and sectarian diversity.

Though under Bhutto’s populist democracy and regime (1972-77), wearing
one’s ethnicity on the sleeves stopped being scoffed at or
discouraged, Bhutto too, could not escape using the remnant ways of
the One Unit mindset to neutralise his opponents.

In the name of nationalism, he used the Army against Baloch
nationalists (1973) and then even turned to appeasing the religious
parties (1974) by invoking the myopic religious aspect of the One Unit
mindset to justify his action against his secular and
ethno-nationalist opponents.

The whole democratic notion of ethnic and religious pluralism was
insulted, and it finally bit back when religious parties used the same
narrow anti-diversity concept of One Unit Islam to topple Bhutto in a
1977 movement.

____________________________

Pakistan had squandered a golden opportunity to become what its
founder, Jinnah, most probably wanted it to be: a democratic,
progressive and pluralistic Muslim majority state.

This squandering wasn’t lamented, but actually celebrated by the likes
of General Ziaul Haq. His dictatorship was a mixture of vicious
Machiavellianism, stern political repression and state-sanctioned
cultural and social myopia, which created various shades of monsters
that emerged from the follies of One Unit Islam. Monsters that to this
day are out to violently do away with any Pakistani who dares to
reject whatever notions the concept of One Unit Islam has mutated
into.

These mutated notions that though pretend to unite us as Muslims, have
gone on to retard the very faith that they believe they are serving.

While the myopic religious aspects of the One Unit mindset were
allowed to take hold in every facet of politics and society by Zia,
the ethnic fissures created by the state in the 1950s and 1960s and
then again under Bhutto, exploded during the Zia dictatorship with the
Sindhis and the mohajir also joining the fray. Each one now bitten by
the economic, political and cultural discrepancies that continued to
arise with the state’s constant effort to enforce a single (and
artificial) concept of nationalism.

This enforced nationalistic notion attempts to appeal to a Pakistani’s
sense of belonging and pride by feeding him distorted sound bytes
about Islamic history, and a fist-clenching exhibition of patriotism
which, when looked a bit more critically, is more akin to a
demonstration of xenophobia against certain ‘enemy religions’,
secularism and, of course, ethnicity.

The myopic message remains: These ‘enemies’ are to be feared and
loathed if Pakistan is to survive as a united nation of Muslims.
Anyone disagreeing is to be suspected and shouted down as being
unpatriotic, or indulging in the ‘polarising ways of ethnic politics’,
or perhaps even being an enemy agent, if not an outright infidel.

Isn’t it clear by now that a democratic celebration of diversity is
what Pakistan should be about, and not an enforced and artificial
sense of faith-based singularity that has generated nothing but
violence, mistrust and confusion?

http://blog.dawn.com/2010/12/02/fearing-diversity/

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