Daily Times

Lt Gen (R) Sahabzada Yaqub Ali Khan, was a beneficent man, who very kindly indulged in long discussions about history and politics with a precocious academic — your scribe. In one such conversation, he asked if it was not imperative for the state to mould and help develop a national narrative and nationhood in a young polity like Pakistan?

My respectful retort to him was that, in the twenty first century, Pakistan is a concrete reality that even its worst enemies are resigned to. The resilience of a polity is inversely proportional to the strength of the singular state imposed narrative.

The more the state is weak, the less space it leaves for alternative voices and narratives.

The recent cryptic shutdown of Geo Television, hardly a promoter of alternate narratives, reflected security state’s attempt at undermining even the appearance of a raucous debate.

To many, my claim that Pakistani polity is home to multiple narratives may sound strange. Having worked in a few parts of the post-colonial world, I am convinced that, relatively speaking, the Pakistanis’ penchant for defying the state authored script for its world views is quite refreshing. In Pakistan, foundational questions about the national story, nature of the state, political economy and the role of religion and ethnic identity are openly asked and debated. I must concede though that that is becoming less the case over the last decade or so.

The anti-minority, religious puritanism and accountability laws have had their role in muzzling dissent. It is little comfort that some of the biggest proponents and framers of such laws, find themselves at the receiving end of those. But all the same, a certain vibrancy of debate, continues to persist.

The call for a disciplined polity based on the objective principles of Islam is actually steeped in masculinist middle class understanding of religion and science

Jan-Peter Hartung, in his book titled A System of Life: Mawdudi and the Ideologisation of Islam, argued that Abu A’la Mawdudi, formulated a systemic vision of an Islamic polity based upon the twin pillars of scientific prowess and a decontextualised reading of the Quran as a singular source. Mawdudi’s view was to extract the pure essence of Islam, outside of history, culture and geography and wed it with modern scientific enterprise as the basis for a polity. The fatal contradictions of such a vision are well recognized in the academic circles. What is less well recognized is how much this vision resonates with the contemporary urban middle classes in Pakistan. Mawdudi never had any delusions about the popular appeal of his ideas. Hence, he always envisioned Jamaat-e-Islami as an organizational weapon which, on the one hand will supply disciplined cadres for street power. And on the other hand, those same cadres will infiltrate the power structures of the state to impose the vision from above. I suspect that his vision has succeeded beyond his temporal expectations.

In an urbanising society like Pakistan, there is a convergence between the shallow scientism of the middle class, the state and the Jamaat’s vision. The call for a disciplined polity based upon some very objective Islamic principles, is in reality steeped in masculinist middle class understanding of religion and science, strongly resonate with the contemporary Pakistani urban voters.

After all, PML-N rank and file is populated by ex-Jamiat people, and those of PTI are scientific people, who again find the visions of a real Islam enunciated by the likes of Mawdudi and Zakir Naik deeply attractive. The security state too, I suspect in the aftermath of the controversies surrounding the 18th amendment, social protection programmes, peace with India, and Geo TV controversy has come to be populated by the votaries of Mawdudi’s vision.

I have often argued that Pakistan is not a fragile state. It never was. It is an incredibly strong, but sadly perverse state. The colonial structures of its institutions and the Islamo-nationalist ideological underpinnings of its polity direct its strengths towards perverse ends. In this state of affairs, silencing of the dissenting voices could prove disastrous for the country. Thousands of cleaning and dishwashing ladies, or maalis lining up outside gated communities for a day’s work, are not going to stand by as the party continues behind barriers and high walls. A national narrative that excludes their real concerns and ambitions will condemn this polity into oblivion. Exhortations of piety and patience are not going to work, being that no one else has them here.

In his article ‘Whiskey and Ink’, in The New Yorker on alcohol addiction among writers, Gary Greenberg argued that the tyranny of addiction makes for a clichéd life and then clichéd writing. He calls it a narrative deficit disorder. Addiction to power too makes for a clichéd life, and clichéd politics. Remember the idiom ‘drunk on power’? Perhaps what we really are witnessing in the Pakistani state, is an acute case of narrative deficit disorder.

The writer is a reader in Politics and Environment at the Department of Geography, King’s College, London. His research includes water resources, hazards and development geography. He also publishes and teaches on critical geographies of violence and terror

Published in Daily Times, April 5^th 2018.