The new nationalist

The new nationalist is invariably foreign-educated and loves to showcase his return as the ultimate sacrifice.

The new nationalist is likely to be in his mid-30s — definitely born well after his parents migrated to the new country; he may or may not have seen and experienced the breaking into two of a nation. He is invariably foreign-educated and loves to showcase his return to his native land as the ultimate sacrifice. His return has accompanied the arrival of America and other states that have come on the pretext of teaching us how to manage and govern ourselves, all in the name of Jeffersonian democracy. Loath to abdicate the acquired traits of the nation he has recently become a citizen of, he clothes himself well in nationalist colours when appealing to the least common denominator in the Pakistani nationalist frame — the ordinary man who prides himself in being a Pakistani.

This man hasn’t seen the hard life. He hasn’t tilled the furrows of this land like the ordinary peasant; he hasn’t stood guard on cold nights, nor has he had the opportunity to put himself in harm’s way in any of the many wars that this nation has had to fight — not even in the struggles to restore democracy from military opportunists. He is new to the scene. He has a task at hand, which is, in many ways, different and more complex compared to what he may have become accustomed to. As he struggles to find his place and pace, he is carried into the milieu of an unfinished work and its emergent contradictions — Pakistan. He is a welcome addition and a potentially useful hand. He joins this nation midstream, when she is consumed with deconstructing complexities and struggling to find cohesion and direction. His disposition is complicated by an ever-vocal civil society and a boisterous media transformation.

What is it that he must do to pull his weight in the right direction? For starters: Slow down; know where societal strains are most vulnerable and avoid those in his noble pursuit; know that any amount of divides that impinge his nation have varying contexts; know that there are some fissures that are pervasive and, at best, need cautious management; these will go if and when the nation begins to gather momentum on some other parallel positive paradigm.

The easiest entry today into Pakistan’s reactionary labyrinth resides in riding civil society’s heretofore flagship bandwagon against the military. While it was relevant when the military was in charge, under a democratic dispensation, it remains a misplaced effort. Beating the military bogey without a cause is not only in bad taste, it smells of instituting another dangerous fissure. The most amused beneficiaries remain those who seek further weakening of the state and its surviving organs. The adage of never whipping a running horse remains pervasively true and needs to be heeded to institute rationality and mitigate dissonance.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2011.