To our Pakistaniyat, with love

Howard Zin argues:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness…”

And it is this darn hope, the ever elusive, flickering, erasable hope that an ordinary Pakistani is trying to catch. We all have our proverbial lanterns, like Diogenes, and we are out running into walls. Perhaps our focus is misplaced – imploring the skies for deliverance, pinning hopes on a Godot that isn’t, citing the ships that have sailed and blaming gravity for our falls.

Zinn goes on:

“What we choose to emphasise in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.”

Few surpass Pakistanis in cynicism – you place a perfectly jolly panda hanging from a tree with our pseudo-political analysts, and rest assured, it would never recover from it. And so, where do we look for answers?

Zinn suggests:

“If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

It does not escape me that few believe in the audacity of the dream that Pakistan was – is. There are more professionals leaving Pakistan today than any time before in our history. On every dinner table, in each household, there are those who have either left or are leaving or have started contemplating the great escape. Who is to say that we genuinely believe Pakistan belongs to all of us today? That the powers that be will always usher us spiralling in orbit endlessly with their vassals in robes playing the flute, out of tune, to the dancing majlis. All of this is true. But is it the whole truth?

A cricket-obsessed nation that we are, having hit rock bottom and been engulfed with silly scandals, we saw a Misbah-led team rise to the top of the world with a test mace. Remember his pull-ups when you drop your shoulders again. This tenacious nation rose like a phoenix – from the war on terror, from the great earthquake of 2004 and then the recent floods that had one-third of the country under water. Politics aside, we fared better than most during Covid. Despite the system, we continue to produce jaw-dropping talent across the spectrum. The collaborative journey of producing JF-17, to its first flight, and then the downing of noisy neighbour’s jets could not be scripted elsewhere. I was teaching a class soon after that iconic presser, reminding the intruders that we shall retain the escalation ladder. We did, and how! Most of us in the class that day were teary-eyed and soared with pride. There are magnificent stories here. We just don’t talk enough about them.

Then, we all have our truths too. It is, after all, a perspective, nothing more. In our stories, we too will find, if we can clear out the cobwebs, people who have done magnificently. That one friend, one teacher, one poet, one sportsman, one artist, one coach who sent, however briefly, “spinning top of a world in a different direction”. If we can find that one person in our stories, apart from ourselves preferably, we will find our way back. Then, it is possible to afford to be foolishly romantic again. So readers, with apologies to Fitzgerald, “…we beat on, boats against the current” towards the new dawn.

The future, from any position we sit in, looks scary – twice as much, even when we employ Rawl’s veil of ignorance. But we are not going to muster up the willingness to walk through our fears with the aid of an external stimulus. Each of us has our dreams to dream, fights to fight; all of that is still possible here, one step at a time, gathering, as Woodsworth put it, the best portions of lives: “Little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”

Pakistan shall remain our object of affection regardless – not least because of the manufactured nationalism. Or that this generation is convinced of its miracle. The only miracle is the people who live in it. After all, it isn’t unnatural to develop a fondness for one’s surroundings. For Khaldun, it was, in part, explained through Asabiyyah. Our surroundings have shaped our way of life and outlook. Due to our languages, literature, customs and culture, we will always identify ourselves with Pakistan – despite our plural identities and diverging views.

Most importantly, our idea of Pakistan is the people we surround ourselves with – nothing more. Pakistaniyat, for once, needs to be defined through its people – not through historical inaccuracies nor fictional struggle from the Muslim majority provinces before Partition. Once we start with the people, we may have a second chance here again.

To second chances!