Many commentators on the politics of Pakistan insist that it was intended to be, or should be, or is an ideological state. This claim will bear scrutiny. The first order of business in this connection should be to figure out what an ideology is. It is a statement and evaluation of the status quo in one or more segments of societal interaction. As such it may be comprehensive or partial in its coverage. Capitalism addresses a system of producing and distributing goods and services but it has little to say about the composition of poetry or fiction. Communism, on the other hand, seeks to direct all of human relationships including institutions such as marriage and family. Islam is said to be a complete code of life. It would be more accurate to say that it is a complete code of morals, for life includes mechanics and engineering about which it has little to say. While it requires mutual consultation in matters of governance, it leaves its forms and procedures to successive generations of Muslims to determine according to the temper and circumstances of the time.
One may ask if democracy can be called an ideology. If yes, it is one of a kind. It allows rivals not only to exist but flourish. It was a democracy that allowed Adolph Hitler to form a political party of his own, contest elections, win, demolish parliament, overthrow the existing democracy, and establish a fascist dictatorship. But even if democracy allows hazards to its own survival, its proponents have to learn to resist them.
Looking beyond democracy, we will see that ideological regimes tend to be intolerant of rival advocacies and systems. Its claims to the contrary notwithstanding, communism in actual practice is a case in point. The failure of communist governments to implement their promises is well known, and outside of Scandinavia socialism has been in retreat. Speaking of our own region, it has broken into factions and become ineffective in India. It ceased to be a force of any consequence in Pakistan particularly after the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case of 1951.
A word should be said here about Islam as an ideology. It calls for a social order based on equal protection of the law for all Muslims. Non-Muslins are assured protection of life and property but unlike Muslims they are required to pay a poll tax. A Muslim pays a tax on savings, and the larger his family the greater the number of exemptions that he can claim. A non-Muslim’s poll tax liability increases proportionately to the size of his family. The unity and solidarity of a Muslim community are sought to be preserved by allowing a Muslim man to marry a Jewish or Christian woman, who may retain her faith after such a marriage; Muslim women may not marry non-Muslim men.
In the economic domain Islam allows a free market economy but it does not approve of the concentration of wealth in a few hands. The wealthy are to deploy resources beyond their needs for the improvement of the community. Monetary transactions are not to be used for making money. Speculative buying and selling is forbidden and so is the giving and taking of interest on loans.
Citizens are free to profess and practice their faith but preaching can be problematic. Jews, Christians and Hindus may convert to a religion of their newer preference but a Muslim converting to another faith runs the risk in practice of being put to death.
It may now be asked if we can do without ideologies altogether. It seems to me that we are doing so in Pakistan where subscription to the Islamic ideology is at best an aspiration, possibly a pretence, and not a ground reality. The ruling ideology here seems to be for its people to make money by means fair or foul and spend it on the good things of life. The alternative to ideology is pragmatism, which is a state of mind in which a person chooses one of the available options on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. It is selecting the course of action that is the most viable. It can and should be made within the framework of values that are generally deemed to be desirable. In calculations of costs and benefits, values can be assigned high status. The extent to which this will be done depends on the prevailing political culture. In Pakistan at this time the professed values are in disarray. In the estimate of those who manage the country’s politics and governance, maximisation of personal profit overrides considerations of the professed values. Like all other things, political cultures change even if gradually. In Pakistan the likelihood of improvement in the years to come need not be excluded.
Where did we find our operational and professed values? The less desirable of our operational values are believed to have derived from feudalism, which has dominated societal interactions in our region. Feudalism recognises only one dimension of relationships between individuals, the one between superior and subordinate. It is the superior’s perquisite to command and the subordinate’s obligation to submit. He does not know the art of associating with equals for achieving the common good. Indeed, the very idea of the common good is foreign to his thinking. This attitude of mind is not confined to the feudal lord’s own hinterland. It has spread to a variety of occupations in both rural and urban areas. Some of our professed values, especially those relating to the work ethic and dedication to duty, have come to us largely from our contact with western education and culture during a century or more of British rule. Commitment to these values remained fairly firm for 10 or 15 years after the British rule, and then it began to languish. Our nativity reasserted itself in recent years. We may be entering a phase in a process of decay where desirable values are not only ignored but put to ridicule.
The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts and can be reached at [email protected]