Daily Times

At a point of time, when we, all human beings, have started to define ourselves by putting on different identities comprising religious, ethnic, national and sexual identities in the form of males and females, and are at each other’s throat to justify truth-value of our  identities. There is a need to remind our crazy selves, which have got lost at present, “Self” of which we, all human beings, are constituents, and which we all share. “Self”, in its essence, means oneness which we, humans, have forgotten. Just before birth, we, all human beings, share sense of oneness, in other words “Self”, with one another in our state of infancy, but right after birth this oneness disappears, and a new ‘self’ is constructed in us by society through an inclusive package of attributes comprising name, sexual identity, ethnicity, religion and nationality which leads to separateness. A resultant ’self’ is, though, our ‘self’ through which we navigate in the society and which we start considering our real ‘self’, but, in reality, the ‘self’, which is given to us by the society, is built on other people’s projections, not ours projections because we have no choice in what should be our name, religion, ethnicity, nationality and social roles attributed to us based upon our sex, which we, out of ignorance, blindly own, follow and overshadow our eternal “Self” with it; as a result, our society given ‘self’ loses its way to plug in to actual ‘Self’ which leads to an epidemic of disconnection among human beings. Let’s look at the various manifestations in Pakistan in particular and across the world in general through which one can decipher to what extent the ‘self’ has lost from the ‘Self’ or in other words lost its essence.

Pakistan is, at present, battling Frankenstein monster in the form of religious extremism which is the carry-over of early years of Pakistan when first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan passed an Objective resolution in 1949 to put the state foundation based on Islamic principles despite opposition by the minority members of the then constituent assembly that such a foundation for Pakistan would backfire for minorities, keeping in view the diverse mosaic of Pakistani society.

Seed sown in 1949 degenerated in 1980s when the state started promulgating Islam through a Sunni version during General Zia’s era for pursuing proxy war in Afghanistan and blindly pursued those policies without heeding its devastating impacts on the diverse citizens’ lot concerns and on the society at large in Pakistan. Because of pursuing narrowly interpreted Islam centric policies for the last sixty years by the state, today a citizen in Pakistan is pre-dominantly being defined by being a “Muslim” which has relegated minorities to second infidels.

At present, from every corner of the society, there is a constant refrain, one can hear from citizens, that Pakistan is an Islamic state and here Islam should define everything, but from citizens to its leaders nobody knows about the essence of Islam which, in its essence, entertains plurality in society through tolerance, and everybody is bent upon pressuring the state to follow Islam in its policies in any manner; it does not matter whether those myopic policies backed by narrow interpretation of Islam are choking minorities’ fundamental rights; case in point here is conservative lot’s in Pakistan pressure on the state not to temper with blasphemy law though under its current vague form hardly does a member from minority get a chance to have a fair trial for his/her defense if s/he is charged with blasphemy, and many a times the law has been resorted to vent out personal grudge against a person from minority by Muslim citizenry.

In short, the state through its policies nurtured such a ‘self’ in citizens that they forgot their actual ‘Self’ and they now do not accept who do not match to their definition of ‘self’; case in point here is the claim of responsibility made by Taliban spokesperson for the suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park last week in which Christians were made the target: “It was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter,” the spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said. “It’s our message to the government that we will carry out such attacks again until sharia [Islamic law] is imposed in the country.”

Another manifestation of ‘self’ not plugged in to ‘Self’ came to spot light recently when Punjab Assembly passed The Women’s Protection Act in February which gives legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. The act was strongly opposed by the right wing in Pakistan, calling it something not allowed in Shariah and considering it a step toward secular Pakistan; term ‘secular’ always invokes western conspiracy in the right wing lot in Pakistan.

On the face value, though the right wing in Pakistan tried to belittle the act through placing it not in the scope of Shariah and calling it a western conspiracy, but, in reality, they do not want any change in the matrix of social roles in patriarchal society. The act aimed at giving space to females’ lot in Pakistan so that they can become a part of mainstream, but this is something which the right wing in Pakistan is averse to.

To them, glorification of Islam can solely be made in choking women’s freedom; this is what we have observed so far from the rulings of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). Every time, CII has a meeting; it discover some new measures in how to confine women in four walls of the house. From the above case, it is quite clear to what extent the ‘self’ nurtured in patriarchal society like ours has got numb to women’ s concerns.

Another manifestation of ‘self’ not grounded in ‘Self’ is the show put up by Donald Trump in the United States (US) and Islamophobes in Europe. Republican candidate Donald Trump is feeding his electorate for his stay in the mainstream presidential candidates in the United States through his nothing less than slandering campaign aimed against Muslims, women and Mexicans by saying that Muslims should be banned from coming into US; women are rabid dogs; Maxicans are rapists.

In all of the above manifestations, there is one thing in common that our crazy ‘selves’ have lost connection with actual ‘Self’ that believes in oneness. Thandie Newton, a Hollywood actress, in her Ted talk entitled “Embracing otherness, embracing myself” in which she shares her story of how the ‘self’ in her got connected to the ‘Self’, very eloquently presents how our crazy ‘selves’ have gone berserk and then later on tells us how our lost ‘selves’ can be connected to the ‘Self’. She says: “We have created entire value system and a physical reality to support the worth of self. Look at the industry for self-image and the job it creates, the revenue it turns over. We would be right in assuming that the self is an actual living thing. But it’s not. It is a projection which our clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves from the reality of death”.  She adds: “If we are all living in our selves, and mistaking it for life, then we are devaluing and desensitizing life”. She reminds us how collectively we have been feeding our crazy selves. “Crucially, we haven’t been figuring out how to live in oneness with the Earth and every other living thing. We have just been insanely trying to figure out how to live with each other-billions of each other. Only we are not living with each other, our crazy selves are living with each other and perpetuating an epidemic of disconnection.”

According to Thandie Newton, there is only one way through which the ‘self’ can get connected the ‘Self’. She says: “There is something that can give the self an ultimate and an infinite connection–and that is oneness, our essence. The self’s struggle for authenticity will never end unless it’s connected to its creator—to you and me. And that can happen with awareness—awareness of the reality of oneness and the projection of self-hood”.

Before the self in us, constructed through other people’s projections, split us apart which is reflective from the various manifestations illustrated above; let us connect with each other through a bond of eternal ‘Self’ that we, all as human beings, share. Let’s not be freaked out by our bountiful nothingness that our crazy ‘selves’ have built for us. We knew our actual ‘Self’ when we were infants; let’s not be forgetful of what we knew in our infancy. This can ensure everlasting peace by developing a sense of tolerance for diversity among us. This utopia can only be materialized by impregnating every mind with little awareness which can come through quality education.

The blogger is a graduate in Social Sciences from Government College University, Lahore. He can be reached at uinam39@gmail.com