Indian animosity is one of the ingredients of the statist paradigm. No matter how hard the political leadership tries to normalise the relationship with India, a Kargil or an Ajmal Kasab is always at hand. A perpetual hatred against Hindus and other ‘infidels’ propagated through the government prescribed textbooks keeps stoking the fire. When an attempt was made to tone down the jihad rhetoric by the previous ANP government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the party was not even allowed to run an election campaign and we are back with preparation to launch a raid on the Red Fort. Where is the paradigm shift?

The Bengali/Baloch treachery has been another building block of the state paradigm; Bengalis were termed half-Hindus, half-naked, and half-Pakistanis ready to collaborate with India to divide Pakistan. None other than Sher-i-Bengal Maulvi Fazlul Haq was dismissed as the elected chief minister of East Bengal, allegedly for conspiring with India.

In Balochistan, from 90-year old Nauroz Khan’s arrest and death in jail during General Ayub Khan’s reign to Akbar Bugti’s murder in the mountains during General Musharraf’s period, from the dismissal of Attaullah Mengal’s elected government by ZA Bhutto in the 1970s to the treatment meted out to Akhtar Mengal’s elected government by Nawaz Sharif in 1990s and then his caged presentation in court by Musharraf regime, there is a long list of violation of Baloch rights. But just as Bengalis were ‘treacherous’, so are the Baloch. Despite the PPP’s Aghaze Huqooqe Balochistan and the PML-N’s sharing of power with the National Party, the state paradigm is evident in the treatment of Mama Qadeer and the latest attempt to stifle debate on Balochistan. The paradigm remains the same.

Read the first part here: Did the paradigm shift?

The corruption cacophony is an ongoing element that percolates through the paradigm. Though corruption has been a serious issue affecting all state institutions, one wonders why the cacophony is overwhelmingly against the politicians. When one can write almost anything -- real or concocted -- about political corruption, a self-censorship has to be imposed while talking about civil and military bureaucracy including the judiciary. The paradigm is unchanged.

The urge to Islamise (or rather Arabise) has also been a constant factor, at least for the past 40 years. Be it the Saudi intervention through ambassador Riaz-al-Khatib during the PNA Movement against ZA Bhutto or the latest demands by the Saudi-leaning mullahs to send troops to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the paradigm continues. From car number plates with Al-Bakistan or Al-Bunjab to shop names such as Bin Dawood or Bin Ali in the urban centres of Pakistan there is a common streak that pushes the paradigm a bit too far, showing that large segments of society have already been infected with it.

The jugular vein syndrome is related In Pakistan, we have tended to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting our existing position resulting in attitude polarisation. A paradigm shift cannot happen if we continue to display our belief preservation which means beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false.to the part of the paradigm that includes Kashmir. By declaring Kashmir as the jugular vein of Pakistan, we admit that a part of it is already in the Indian control. Repeated attempts to prove that Pakistan cannot survive without Kashmir inadvertently make us even more vulnerable. This is probably the most dangerous aspect of the paradigm, putting the whole country at stake for an issue that can and should be resolved by negotiations rather than refusing to budge an inch unless Kashmir is given to Pakistan. From the tribal infiltration to the Operation Gibraltar to a plethora of outfits still roaming around freely and coming out on streets at the drop of a hat, the paradigm continues.

Resulting from all of the above is a perpetual paranoia that is eroding the thinking capacity of the nation and the state alike. When General Mirza Aslam Beg propounded the doctrine of strategic depth, that was a reflection of his delusions; when Dr AQ Khan spouts threats to destroy every Indian city within minutes, that is paranoia; when nuclear capacity is flaunted as a sign of security, the collapse of the Soviet Union -- possessing thousands of nuclear warheads -- is conveniently ignored. This is called confirmation bias i.e. a tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses. This means people gather or remember information selectively or interpret it in a biased way. Normally, the effect is stronger for emotionally-charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

In Pakistan, we have tended to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting our existing position resulting in attitude polarisation. A paradigm shift cannot happen if we continue to display our belief preservation which means beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false. Usually, people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs, focusing on one possibility and ignoring the alternatives. When people or states stick to an old paradigm despite overwhelming evidence against it, they are weighing up the cost of being wrong rather than investigation in a neutral way. This tendency contributes to overconfidence in beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.

When a state perpetuates a paradigm it expects its citizens to change their behaviour in the desired way through education, propaganda, and arm twisting. An alternative paradigm is not allowed to be presented and is crushed in the name of patriotism.

Gradually, subjects become incapable of making a rational choice, as has happened in Pakistan.

In his classic essay Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice, Kuhn reiterates five criteria for theory choice: it should be accurate i.e. empirically adequate, consistent both internally and externally, broad in scope, simple in explanation, and finally fruitful in disclosing new relationships among phenomena. Apply these criteria to Pakistan and you will see how inadequate our state-sponsored paradigm has become with all its ingredients.

The paradigm shift we are supposed to salute is neither accurate nor consistent. We are led to believe that a narrow movement of the goalpost will save us without any major resetting of policy objectives. If there is any paradigm shift at all, it is not broad in scope and fails to explain or disclose new relationships among phenomena, apart from an occasional press release about the destroyed targets and missiles fired.

The readers who are interested in reading more about related topics may also consult Michael Polanyi’s Science, Faith and Society. Polanyi (1891-1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath who wrote extensively on the theory and practice of knowledge.

Though social scientists have tried to develop a consensus on, let’s say, human rights and democratic principles, it remains an uphill task to prove that one social paradigm has lived its life and should be replaced by a more progressive one that is in line with the changing realities.

In physical science it is much easier to show the benefits of a drug to an ailing person but in society it is much more challenging to show the fruits of democracy or provincial autonomy or to accept the beauty of diversity in faiths and opinions. An interferon drug can cure hepatitis patients across the world and be accepted as a universal remedy but a simple course on comparative religions to generate tolerance in society or a syllabus on life skills education will cause uproar comparable to an apocalypse. In a society, even if people encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by their paradigm, they might kill or die to defend it.

So, in conclusion we might say that yes there have been some changes; just look at the nascent maturity of democracy in the joint parliamentary sessions, first to counter the dharna brigade and then to pronounce Pakistan’s neutrality in the Yemen conflict. But these changes can hardly be termed a paradigm shift.