Daily Times

For many Pakistanis, Pakistani exceptionalism is almost an article of faith. I once had the honour of asking Ms Hina Jilani at a conference if in her view Pakistan was one freak of a country or if it was just another depressingly familiar post-colonial society. Her answer was a nuanced combination of the two options, but I think the matter needs reflection.

In this election season, what to my mind was a paragon of right wing, pro-capitalist, anti-women and anti-minority party — the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) — is being touted as leftist. I can see the logic. After all, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) seems to be competing with an almost Trumpian abandon for the most toxic, bordering on Alt-right political space. And PPP having had the stamp of bad governance and corruption tattooed to its forehead — perhaps permanently — is not even being considered as a contender for national office. The host of regional parties, including the Awami National Party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and a few other minor nationalist parties in Balochistan and Sindh, may offer some left field options. But almost all of them are too beholden to personalities and families, and their message is too steeped in ethno-identity politics to be of any major relevance to the national political landscape. The Awami Workers Party (AWP), however seems to be making some ripples on the political Left. But it is early days for the party and would be interesting to see how it does in the constituencies it is contesting.

The moving of the political centre to what might have been considered far right in the 1970s is now complete. But this trend is not peculiar to Pakistan. The depressing rise of the nationalist right from India to Italy, and the UK to the USA is a familiar story. It is open season on ethnic and religious minorities’ and women’s rights. Fascisms seems to be in the air across the world. Pakistan sadly, is no exception.

How did we get here? The standard answer amongst the liberals is two hyphenated words, ‘Zia-ul-Haq’. I however, doubt this. Pakistan’s history did not begin on July 5, 1977. Much before Zia, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had already incorporated a number of regressive laws and policies into the Constitution and the state’s administrative structure. Earlier on, Ayub Khan and had also done his bit to steer the country towards the political right.

Is Pakistan an exceptional state? Sadly, no. It is so mundanely typical of a post-colonial society, obsessed with repeating every mistake and perversity found in the Western societies it takes as ideals

The nub of the matter to my mind, is the almost global march towards unfettered neo-liberalism since the 1980s. The world had seen a similar sort of a period of unbridled capitalism, dominated by the financial industry, which came crashing down in the 1930s and ushered in the horrors of two world wars and a mass slaughter of human beings that was unprecedented in human history. The holocaust against the Jews, Slavs, homosexuals and communists is unique because it was perpetrated by the most scientifically advanced and culturally sophisticated society on earth at the time — Germany.

Contemporaneously, we find ourselves in a comparable situation. The language of finance and capital has descended to the capillary level of our culture and body politic.

Young people who I teach at King’s from all over the world, can imagine the end of the world, alternate universes, aliens, the images of gods or God, but they cannot imagine the end of capitalism. One of the most insidious effects of consumerist neo-liberalism across the world, has been the complete shackling of the imagination. As one of my esteemed colleague Humaira Iqtidar has argued, even our spirituality is expressed as if one is balancing a financial ledger — good deeds versus bad deeds; how much heaven credit does one get for fasting on a Friday versus a Tuesday?

Virtue as a directly proportionate function of the size of one’s beard or hijab. If everything is reducible to costs and benefits, and the purpose of existence is well known and attainable, meaning consumerist bliss in this world and sensory bliss in the hereafter, then humanity and its condition indeed becomes invisible.

Young people I know in Pakistan do not know what intellectual corruption is. And when it is explained they don’t care. Financial corruption is the only one they understand because that’s the universe they know, and no other. Is Pakistan an exceptional state? Sadly no. It is so mundanely typical of a post-colonial society, obsessed with repeating every mistake and perversity of its Western aspirational ideal societies. Why should PML-N not be the new left then?

But there’s hope. The working people of the world and Pakistan will not let this charade built on their naked backs go on forever. I am with Antonio Gramsci on this one — ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the spirit’. And I have seen plenty of that lately at PTM and AWP rallies, and in the stupidities of the security state.

The writer is a researcher 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 critical geographies of violence and terror

Published in Daily Times, June 29^th 2018.