Daily Times

Shakespeare famously asked what’s in a name. A lot came the pat answer with arguments mentioning the heady concoction of names, identities, self-realization and acceptance. Closely connected to this question is the discussion on symbols and their implication. A younger cousin was in a fight last week over a symbolic action, to put it at best. Going to class, someone crossed his path wearing a starched cotton shalwar kamiz. Nearing my cousin, he straightened the starched cotton shirt. My young cousin took it as a symbol for arrogance and promptly decided to mess up his starched shirt.

Symbols, symbolic action and symbolic value have a lot to do in today’s world. We have been bombarded with social media messages of how not to buy a certain shoe because it allegedly has Islamic symbols on the sole. Amazon had to recently recall some merchandise from India because the Hindu majority found some symbols offensive to their faith. Our thumb up is symbolic of encouragement while the opposite is true of the symbolic value of some other fingers of our hand. Thus, it is all about the symbolic value. An entire service industry based on product design is based on symbols and what they imply. We, it seems more than the action, are concerned with its symbolic value. Political parties have fought over who will be assigned the book symbol for instance.

Talking of symbolic values and elections, elections symbols are important too. Since a large majority of the electorate in any area or constituency in our country remains uneducated or under educated, therefore the value of symbols remain central to any party or candidate. For instance, the ruling party these days i.e. PML-N has tiger as their symbol. It is a fact that tiger or other felines represent power and authority and that is what the ruling party posses, power and unchallenged authority. Similarly, the Jamat-e-Islami has book as its election symbol and as we all know book represents knowledge. However, it’s a different debate whether the Jamat-e-Islami has anything to do with education and knowledge, except for the fact that the party in question forced the KP government to withdraw or make changes in the curriculum of the various books taught to children. Some of these changes pertained to insertion of Quranic verses in chemistry books, removal of chapters on Raja Ranjit Singh and Raja Dahir and reinsertion of verses on Jihad in text books. So now we know for sure that symbols can be seriously deceptive.

The Election Commission of Pakistan allocates symbols to candidates and parties in General Elections and the nominated Returning Officers allocate election symbols to candidates during the local government elections. During the local government elections held in 2015 in KP, the election symbols were divided into six categories. Category 1 represented Muslim, Category 2 Muslim Women, Category 3 Peasants/Workers, Category 4 Peasant Women, Category 5 Nazim and Naib Nazim and Category 6 Minorities. There were other sub divisions as well. However, my point of contention here is the insensitive allocation of symbols, especially in case of candidates from minority communities.

During the local government elections held in KP during 2015, the minority candidates were allocated symbols like dog, rat and snake. Although, a plain look at these symbols doesn’t reveal any insensitivity, however, a comparison with symbols allocated to other candidates provides a good insight into the minds behind this allocation. Animal symbols were allocated to candidates from almost every category described above. However, the candidates from Muslim category were allocated symbols like Elephant and Eagle, both representing strength and superiority. Similarly, the Muslim Women category was allocated symbols like Butterfly and Stag. Peasants were allocated fish, peasant women were allocated parrot and no animal symbol was allocated to the Nazim and Naib Nazim category.

It is a known fact that in a country like ours people attach a lot of value to symbols. A dog is usually regarded as a dirty animal. However there can be other plausible interpretations as well. Similarly, rat is considered as a filthy creature and same is the case with snake, which is also considered as a poisonous animal. Although an animal remains an animal but tiger, lion, eagle and for that matter elephant are considered as superior animals. This has a lot to do with the local folklore. Additionally, it is important to understand that cultural elements remain important to an individual more than any other factor. Therefore such insensitivity towards minorities is highly condemnable. We as part of a country where minorities constitute a considerable section of the population must not be insensitive towards them. This is serious injustice on our part.

This election lets pay at least a symbolic respect to all Pakistani citizens. For those who argue that there is no sub-conscious or conscious bigotry in the election symbols, let me propose this: let’s have a rat and a dog’s symbol for the Muslim category for a change.

The writer is a development consultant. She tweets at @GulminaBilal and can be reached at coordinator@individualland.com