Our world is becoming a
global village at a very rapid pace and many places and countries are turning into a melting pot of cultural and social diversity. This phenomenon has brought us face to face with people from different and distant cultures. These days, you can find restaurants and cultural centres of foreign and ‘exotic’ people and lands in almost all the major cities of the world. This kind of globalisation has brought humans together in ways that were not imaginable a hundred years ago. Many countries in the world put a lot of emphasis on the need of diversity and multiculturalism. Some countries like the US have state-sponsored programmes to bring in immigrants from under-represented cultures and countries in their societies.
In spite of growing acceptance of diversity in the developed world there are still places where differences and otherness are looked at very suspiciously. A country like Pakistan, which is blessed with diversity in every aspect of life, unfortunately falls in this second category. The great blessing of multiculturalism and social diversity has been ignored and neglected and there have been intentional and unintentional efforts to level any form of diversity in an ineffective effort to build one nation with one language and one religion.
Biologists and social scientists agree that there is a correlation between bio diversity and cultural diversity. Bio diversity is important for our physical, ecological, environmental and climactic stability and survival. Cultural diversity is needed in societies for socio-cultural balance and harmony. Socio-cultural diversity exposes us to different opinions, viewpoints, beliefs, languages and customs. It helps us in understanding the other, and in coming out of the bubble we live in and comprehend the fact that people who are unlike us are also human and deserve the same rights and respect, as do we.
Knowing one another more and learning about differences help us become more accepting of people from various religious and socio-cultural backgrounds. This also helps us in overcoming the illusion that we are the only ones on the right path. Such self-righteous thinking in societies can lead to extremism and fascistic attitudes in groups of people. The acceptance of ‘other’ is the cornerstone of tolerant and peaceful societies and no society can survive without training its populace to accept and live with differences. Societies have used education and schooling to achieve social stability and harmony. Young ones at an early age are introduced to concepts of cultural and social diversity in their surroundings. This kind of education ends up in forming a generation that is more accepting of ‘others’ and of differences.
We as a nation have degenerated into an intolerant and extremist society over the last 65 years. We are a country richly endowed with linguistic and cultural heritage that is very diverse and colourful. But this great treasure has been a victim of gross negligence since the inception of Pakistan. This rather criminal neglect has resulted in an overall confusion about differences and alienation of people of one ethnicity and culture from other ethnicities and cultures within Pakistan. This estrangement among communities has become one of the main causes of intolerance and radicalisation that is rampant in our society today. This kind of unawareness about the ‘other’ have created such instances where a young Muslim student asks another young Christian student, “Do you bury your dead upside down?” This example shows that not teaching about diversity can result into purely stupid and foolish perceptions about one another.
Pakistan has a multi-religious and multi-sectarian population and just like other diversities this aspect of national life has also been turned into a liability instead of a source of pride and celebration. The present sectarian and religious violence is the result of criminally noxious policies towards religious and sectarian diversity of the country by subsequent governments in Pakistan. A country rife with diversity cannot afford to keep its population unaware of diversity in its surroundings. This negligence has brought us to the stage where in many international reports Pakistan is considered one of the most dangerous places for religious, ethnic and sectarian minorities. But in spite of all the bad news, our total fall into the abyss of hatred and intolerance has not occurred yet because a significant number of people in Pakistan are very tolerant of each other. To stop this fall down the precipice of ignominy and obscurantism there will be no more opportune time than now to increase and propagate the message of tolerance and respect for others in our country. It is high time that authorities realise that the diversity we have is a blessing and we need to make full use of it and should promote and protect it. A good start could be educating the younger generation about the multi-cultural and multi-religious make-up of Pakistani nation. This one simple step will be a big leap for our society and will have a very positive and productive impact in the long term.
The writer is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana