Conspiring against ourselves

Side-effect

The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.

When the news of our leading qawwal and Sufi musician Amjad Sabri’s assassination broke, my friend Salman Asif shared on his Facebook page the image of the iconic expressionist painting, ‘The Scream’, by the Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. It was Asif’s comment on the state of affairs prevalent in the country, the callousness of the fanatic, the insensitivity of the powerful and the helplessness of the common citizen.

Internet connectivity does wonders as we immediately received this terribly sad news in Oslo and some colleagues began to browse through the social media. At the very moment that Asif uploaded the image in Islamabad, a few of us Pakistanis were standing right in front of the ‘The Scream’ displayed in the National Art Museum of Norway.

Like his ancestors, Amjad Sabri gave the people of Pakistan elation and hope with his music. His devotional and humanistic qawwalis filled with joie de vivre were like a splash of bright colour on the pale canvas of our cultural existence. Sabri gave our children songs to sing and tunes to remember. We, in return, gave his children screams of terror and cries of pain.

Why do I say ‘we’ and not just the killers responsible for inflicting pain on his family and friends, fans and admirers? You may argue that most people we know were depressed and unhappy with this news. They condemned the brutal killing of an innocent 39-year-old artiste, a husband and a father, in broad daylight in the biggest city of Pakistan. Thousands participated in Sabri’s funeral procession and people from all walks of life were present for his last rites. You may say that Karachi mourned his death and Pakistan remains in a state of shock. There are vigils that continue to happen in different cities and concerts dedicated to him are being planned across the country.

However, I would still say that we are collectively responsible for letting this happen to us. Yes, that collective responsibility may not include the working class, the labour and the peasantry. But this responsibility must be shared by the elites and the different strata of the middle class.

The elites and middle classes of Pakistan get sad and depressed when people they know are attacked or murdered. But for so many of them such sorrow is usually short-lived. Either a new event in their backyards distracts their attention or a new conspiracy theory either hatched or accepted in their living rooms gives them solace and a reason to believe in the unreasonable.

In Oslo, the Alma Culture Centre, very ably run by Dr Tina Shagufta Kornmo, organised a three-day dialogue about Pakistan and an art exhibition comprising some Pakistani artists, which was curated by Nageen Hyat of Nomad Gallery, Islamabad. The Alma Culture Centre was supported by the Oslo City Council and the Arts Council. The event, titled ‘Pakistani Voices’, had a number of interactive sessions on issues ranging from satire and freedom of expression and women and minority rights to contemporary film and television and art and literature in Pakistan.

A number of leading Norwegian academics, artists and journalists also participated in these panel discussions. Somewhat unique and encouraging was the presence and involvement of the Pakistani ambassador, Riffat Masood. There was also a dedicated session on the mindset and role of the Pakistani diaspora, in Norway in particular and Europe in general. One of the sessions revolved around the conspiracy theories that take roots among Pakistanis or people of Pakistani-origin and how they prevent us from identifying our inherent problems, leave alone resolving them.

One of the biggest conspiracy theories that we continue to harbour is that there is a vicious design to demean and oppress Muslims and a wicked scheme is at work to destabilise, disintegrate, crush and eliminate Pakistan as a country. Somehow, we also see a direct connection between the two seemingly different ploys. We have been taught to believe that we are the fortress of Islam. It is us who are the only nuclear power among Muslims nations. It is us who are the custodians of the rights of all the Muslims who live in this world.

Let us remind ourselves a few things that we forget here or are not taught to us. Turkey is equally powerful and equipped, if not more than us, as far as military strength is concerned. Economically and in terms of international influence, we are no match. Without even being a nuclear state, Turkey is a member of Nato.

Most of the Middle East – from Iran and Bahrain to UAE and Saudi Arabia – is far richer than Pakistan. There is absolutely no comparison possible between their wealth and our poverty. We provide labour to these economies and that’s it. Malaysia and Indonesia fare much better than us when it comes to industry, commerce and trade. These countries can afford to espouse the greater Muslim cause more successfully than we ever can.

Whether one agrees with them or not, even in the theological realm Islamic scholars of any global consequence – from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi – were a product of South Asian Muslim society from before the creation of Pakistan. We have only produced televangelists and proselytisers since then.

Among affluent middle-class Pakistanis and their diaspora, most think that every other country is out there to bring destruction to Pakistan. We do not ever realise that we pose no technological and economic challenge to any significant country anywhere in the world. We are not even a proper middle-income economy. We produce less from our fertile agricultural land than most countries comparable to us since there is no mechanisation and there have been no agrarian reforms for decades.

Our industry is increasingly being limited to producing cement for construction, sugar, edible oil and fast moving consumer goods for basic consumption or assembling (not manufacturing) cars and motorbikes. The rest we import. Our commerce and trade are marred by deficits in financing and the tight red tape wrapped around our jugular vein by the bureaucracy.

We do not produce any genuine scientists of merit or original scholars of excellence. Exceptions are there to prove the rule and they can be counted on fingers given the 180 million population of the country. We have even stopped producing sportsmen and women of any worth. In 2016, Pakistan has no official team participating in Olympics for the first time, not even the men’s hockey team which had brought us a solitary gold medal from some Olympics in the past. There are only some wild card entries this year.

The affluent and the educated in Pakistan, and likewise in the majority of their diaspora, have refused to recognise the elephant in the room. This mammoth of bigotry is swinging its huge trunk recklessly, wagging its thick tail wildly and stamping its heavy feet indiscriminately. Whoever comes in its way is annihilated.

This mammoth was also sent huge amounts of international rations to consume by Western powers in the past. But it was also fed for long by our own leaders and security agencies. From Z A Bhutto and Gen Ziaul Haq to Gen Pervez Musharraf and Imran Khan, from the PML-N to the PTI, all martial rulers and mainstream political parties were involved in the past and are involved at present in feeding this mammoth out of sheer political expediency and an inability to make the right strategic choices.

What the elites and the middle classes have to understand is that we are conspiring against ourselves by hatching and harbouring conspiracy theories. A large part of what is happening to us is due to either our own doing – or our not doing anything. Unless we change the way we think, an acceptance for extremism and a rationale for violence will remain in the society around us.

Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com