The patriarchal setup has gradually relented and given space to the women of the formerly colonised countries and lost the traditional power that came with the social setup. Imperialist and culturalist colonisation is the game-changing event of the past two centuries because it brought forward the two distinct strains of social setup in the world. Obviously, the world was divided on two poles, colonised and colonising world and so were the gender roles and the oppression related to it. The colonised world was deemed a savage world to be civilised by the colonisers and so the patriarchal setup became a direct target to be hit in comparison to the Western world. Obviously, the colonised world was portrayed as a world characterised by the patriarchal style of living, which allowed an opportunity for to coloniser to claim that he was there to alleviate the sufferings of the brown women caused because of the patriarchs of the colonised. So, the struggle began from here and the agenda was manipulated in this context. This article discusses the multiple variables that worked wonders in this regard. Colonisation is the phenomenon that brought cultural encounters but mostly with one as an influential culture and the other as a less powerful or inferior culture of the colonised. Consequently, sub-phenomena like hybridity, identity, othering and marginalisation emerged. Culture, men and women became the battleground for the battle of all such forces. Gramsci, the Italian philosopher, declared that with the passage of time, the superior culture would assume superiority and would create a higher level of acceptance for the alien culture and hence reciprocally undermine the level of the indigenous culture. Gramcie termed this phenomenon cultural hegemony and its manifestation has been witnessed by everyone in the shape of popular Western culture sprouting and prospering everywhere. The colonisers implanted their culture and ultimately the process of decolonisation resulted in the withdrawal of the colonising forces to their respective territories, but the culture of these colonisers exists even today because of the hegemonic effect of the colonisation. Because of such an impact of colonisation, patriarchal thinking and approach have changed a better and more tolerant attitude towards women. Three main forces of colonisation have played a significant role in catalysing and sustaining the patriarchal set to go a little bit in the back footing and have allowed women to take steps for their development and independence. Firstly, the men and women from the colonised areas moved to the coloniser’s world and witnessed the patriarchy-neutralised culture, which was influenced by that. The people who opted to stay had to comply with the norms of the colonisers’ culture and had to subdue the oppressive patriarchal tendencies. When such people travelled back to their countries, the men and women brought the message of the alien culture and demanded a similar change in the local patriarchy. As a result, the patriarchal set attempted to relaunch its fault lines. Secondly, the interaction between the coloniser and the colonised, where he portrayed himself as an anti-patriarch, also changed the mindset of the local patriarch. And thirdly, above all, the role of contemporary literature of the coloniser, where the patriarch is given an evil appearance and mostly a softer image of the patriarch is developed. Pakistani fiction in English, by toeing this line of patriarchal portrayal, at first gave images of hardliner patriarchs in their stories, but with the passage of time, the intensity level of patriarch began to subside and significantly softer images of the patriarchy were created. This proved more aligned with the pro-feminist men’s image than patriarchal ones. For example, the patriarchal image has been very strongly portrayed in the fiction by Professor Ahmed Ali to Zulfikar Ghose, but with Bapsi Sidhwa in the 1970s onwards, the intensity of the severity began to decrease until in the 1990s and onwards we find a clear supportive and softer image of the patriarch. For example, Sidhwa’s protagonists, like Faredoon, David and Ice Candyman, all prove milder versions of the patriarchy. Similarly, Hamid’s protagonists, Changez Khan, Orangzeb and Saeed conform to the softer image of the patriarchy. The same has been done by Shamsie, Mohammad Hanif and Nadeem Aslam in their novels in English. So, it can be maintained that the patriarchal setup in the societies like Pakistan has changed into a softer image because of the contributions of the Western cultural impact and globalisation. Pieces of literature in English have also contributed significantly to developing a softer image of the patriarch. The actual social setup may have a few examples of patriarchy of the hardliners but literature in English is constantly knocking at making the patriarch a pro-feminist man instead of an anti-feminist one.
The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee
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