A racist reality

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

A nation exists only when it is bound together by some sense of commonality and some degree of willingness to accept and appreciate all those who live in it. Otherwise it is simply a stretch of land, big or small, brought together by political or geographic accident, and then kept together by the use of a cohesive force or perhaps simply expediency.

Such nations frequently crumble; we have seen this through history as countries across the globe have drifted apart to form new ones – sometimes after years of struggle and at other times relatively peacefully.

As the citizens of a country that has already seen brutal dismemberment and still faces nationalistic strife, we should have learnt to be especially conscious of these factors. Apparently, we have not. There are sharp divides within our territory, and racist stereotyping spurs these on. The intermediate level sociology text book being used in Punjab and Sindh that describes the Baloch as “uncivilized people”, who are engaged in “murder and loot”, was brought to the attention of the Senate by Senator Mir Kabir Ahmed Shahi of the National Party. It has since provoked at least some outrage across the country, with the chief ministers of both provinces promising an inquiry.

It is sad that concern over the content has not been raised before, given that the said book has been in use for at least three decades. It is also a recommended book for the Central Superior Services examination, used to select our top administrators. One wonders what kind of administrative leadership they can offer with the kind of mind-set that these books create. One also wonder what other biases exist in the material taught to our young people, and why this has not been a matter of greater concern.

The derogatory description of an entire ethnic population is, of course, one reason for the strife we see in Balochistan today. The people of the province believe that they have been treated unjustly for years, by a state dominated by Punjab, and judging from the language and tone in the pages of that widely used textbook, it is quite easy to see why they should feel that way.

The words of an angry Senator, of course, illustrate the sentiments that run through the veins of the country – a country in which the colour of blood seems to change from one province to the next and from one region to the other. This sense of difference – tied in to ideas about supremacy and dominance – has been used repeatedly for political purposes.

We see this all around us: when we look at Karachi and the events happening there, and when we pan out to take into the frame the province of Sindh and then the country as a whole. Feelings of deprivation on the basis of lingual or ethnic identification exist in many places beyond Balochistan. We saw this recently when the Pakhtuns posted angry messages across social media about the lack of sensitivity shown by their countrymen to the bomb blast in Peshawar that killed at least 16 bus passengers, as they celebrated a minor cricket victory.

Perhaps the matter was played up, but the fact that this can happen so easily demonstrates in many ways just how fragile we are as a nation and how weak the chain that links us together has become. In some case segments from this chain seem to have frayed badly, putting us all at risk.

We would perhaps have been in a better position to understand this if we had been insightful and intelligent enough to take better heed of our past and the events that took place not many years ago. The loss of the territory we once called East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh was not simply the result of bad political decisions or the actions of militants backed by other countries in the neighbourhood.

The essential problem stemmed from a deep sense of racial divide and a refusal to acknowledge the Bengalis as equals, despite their remarkable historical and cultural heritage. The fact that this part of our nation and its people were so often put down and described as hazy, stereotypical outlines, rather than real people, contributed to the violent series of events that occurred in 1970.

We need to guard against any greater strains in the fabric that remains intact. Handing our students books that quite deliberately stigmatise a particular group of people will not help in any way. There is also the labelling of the Baloch as ‘unpatriotic’ people or as ‘traitors’. We need to look at matters from the perspective of the people of that province and try to understand quite why they feel enraged and let down by the country, to which they are constitutionally and territorially linked. This is essential to our future.

To achieve these goals, we must first of all cleanse the materials we teach to our children and ensure that they build empathy for all the groups that make up our diverse country. It is when diversity is understood that nations are born. Canada seems to be one of the countries of the world that has succeeded in this more than others by embracing all the groups that live there, regardless of the fact that they may have different religious beliefs or come from separate ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We too must learn to appreciate diversity and do more to comprehend how perceptions of inequality are created.

To achieve this, it is essential that we move beyond racism and beyond the tendency to point fingers and lay blame in a particular place. There is no reason at all why the Baloch should be murderous or inclined to robbery. It would be hard to produce any solid facts that back this description. It is important, then, to inculcate in our students, at every level, the ability to think and research for themselves, rather than accept all that is delivered to them through the printed lines of textbooks or class handouts. Had we achieved this, the absurd content of that sociology textbook would perhaps have been made more widely known, and consequently altered, many years ago.

Since this did not happen, it has caused harm by building upon the notions already implanted in numbed minds. We need to make sure we can activate these minds and create a greater sense of unification by bringing all the people of our nation closer. This cannot be achieved by enforcing uniformity but, rather, by encouraging individuality and promoting the idea that all languages, all beliefs and all customs are equal and none is superior to the other. Breaking away from racism is crucial to our future. We have had generation after generation grow up under the cloud of racism that is poisoning us till today.

We have to find a way to introduce cleaner air into the environment and make it possible for every citizen to breathe more deeply and create the basic understanding that is needed to bind the people of all territories, to make this nation a unified whole.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com