The Pakistani liberal
From the above, the Pakistani liberal sounds like a very powerful person and no wonder he is held responsible for so many things. After all, he is in control of almost every facet of Pakistani life and so should be held accountable for his actions. And while we are at it, let us also call to task the Pakistani liberal for the budget deficit (they keep up the spending and lower the tax collection due to nefarious plots) and the 2005 earthquake (they can alter the movement of tectonic plates).
However, I have one tiny problem with the description above. None of the characteristics above (and others usually used) describe a liberal in the classical or modern sense of the word. In brief, classical liberalism is rooted in individual freedom, equality, free markets and private property. To these concepts, modern liberalism has added the development of the welfare state and concern for social justice and civil rights. A liberal democracy is then a republic, which espouses and promotes such values.
The incongruence between what a liberal and a Pakistani liberal is cannot be starker. None of the descriptions above signify that the liberal believes in equality and civic rights, for example. Just imagine a rich Pakistani giving his/her ‘servants’ a fair wage and good employment conditions. Unthinkable. Or else we would not have horror stories of domestic help abuse and tenant abuse. Just imagine if the Pakistani liberal believed in social justice and the welfare state, then he would have to pay all his taxes and logically, the gap between the rich and the poor would not be that great. And just envision a Pakistani liberal allowing for individual freedom — the fun-loving, jeans-wearing, modern youth of Pakistan cannot simply allow you not to support the Great Khan. In short, the Pakistani liberal is the antithesis of what a liberal is actually meant to be.
So, who are these liberals that the Right (religious and others) decries and the Western media lauds? Hardly a week goes by without a vomit of words on either side. Opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine lionise the ‘Pakistani liberals’, while pieces in the daily Jang and others blast the scheming Pakistani liberals. The impression given is that there is a war, existential and otherwise, going on between the liberals and the conservatives for the soul of the country and that both are numerous and powerful.
The sad truth is that perhaps, there are no real liberals in Pakistan. The ‘Pakistani liberal’ is a monolith, which is a remarkable feat of our collective imagination, with no discernible features or groupings. For the Right, a ‘Pakistani liberal’ is someone they do not like or agree with. Being called a ‘liberal’ is a pejorative term for them and encompasses a wide variety of people, who mostly have nothing else in common. For the Western (and other) champions of Pakistani liberals, they are living in the hope that there must be some actual liberals in Pakistan. Westerners lament the paucity of liberal voices in Pakistan simply because they hardly exist, not because they are present in large numbers and are simply beleaguered.
With the amount of airtime and importance given to the Pakistani liberal, all I can say in the end is, ‘All hail, my imaginary Pakistani liberal, friend and foe!’
Published in The Express Tribune, October 30th, 2012.
COMMENTS (41)
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the problem with pakistanis who call themselves ''liberal'' is that they are not- if a liberal is atheist, they respect others with different religious beliefs. but pakistani liberals militantly critisize islam, and look down upon those who are religious. they don't know what a liberal is: they are not liberals but wannabe's. most of the things they say would be frowned upon (or even laughed at) in the west.
@Uza Syed:
the govts should change the names of roads, places etc which have been named after non-muslims and should name them after muslim heroes.
awsum!
@G M Patra:
That may be the case elsewhere. In Pakistan especially, a liberal has to very furiously express his / her displeasure for Islam (not just any religion - just with Islam). If a Liberal get into Mulla Bashing, he / she can claim rights to heroism.
But the pretense of Pakistani Liberals is that they never claim to be secular. In fact they claim to be better Muslims in bashing Islam.
I posted my comment twice but it wasn't allowed to go through. It seems like my criticism of liberals touched a raw nerve with the moderators. How liberal!
Moderator what happened to my post? Int. Herald did not clear it?
Most of the commentators on opinion pieces are overly obsessed indians.
@Uza Syed
Thats not liberal, thats selfl-loathing, inferiority complex and fixation.
@Uza Syed: well said.
Terrible, terrible article. The logic used is completely flawed. He provides no evidence that the whisky-drinking pseudo-liberal pakistani supports drone attacks. A good example of what a bad article looks like.
Yes, one more thing, Bangash Sahib, a liberal is that rare bird in Pakistan who has respect and guts to acknowledge and publicly remind us, all, the story of our ancestry, "our Hindu past" and confess how brutally we've "obliterated" our own history and thus "deliberately" denied our true identity and confused the posterity about who we are and where lies or should lie our pride. We are and have always been children of this land which is and has always been part of an ancient and glorios history. That's what is liberalism and a liberal here in Pakistan is someone who can attempt to shame the shameless who purposefully ignore and avoid to give credit and show gratitude to some of our benefactors for the simple reason of their Belief which was other than ours. Ask any average 'Ghairatmand' around the corners of any street here or for that matter in any school or college who Sir Ganga Ram or Bhagat Singh was and why we must remember them, and pay respects and be grateful to, along with many many others. And let me assure you that you won't be surprised to note what damage we have done to our children by keeping them oblivious to our true roots.
As far as my humble understanding is concerned, liberalism as a political ideology remains a minority political strain in most of the world. As a political power, its heydays remain that of late 19th century & early 20th century in opposition to conservative politics. As more population was allowed to vote, liberals were dislodged by labor & social democratic parties in western world. However, their intellectual influence has continued unabated till this time.
With the exception of Social Liberal parties in Canada & Philippines, no other country can boast of a mainstream liberal party that contends for power on standalone basis. In most countries, they are at most junior partner in coalition governments. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, Liberal is a used as a pejorative term by right wing elements for denoting any person that doesn't live according to their social norms & disagree with their politics. A person, who drinks or lives a licentious life, can be a conservative or socialist in his political thinking. A dhoti wearing & lassi sipping rural person can be a liberal, if he believes on individual freedom & doesn't want to impose his life style on others..
Good article. I have had same feelings in recent days. Pakistani liberal is not a liberal in a true sense. How come a person call himself liberal who wants full freedom for himself but does not respect for other freedom or thoughts? Pakistani liberal is mixed breed of its own kind :). Probably this word needs to be added in dictionary :). Regarding your remarks on PTI, I believe everyone has right to choose and let other choose their leader. But it should not be blind following. Like I think PTI is better than other parties at the memento, this should not mean that I should not criticize them. Appreciate when they do good, criticize when they do bad.
Btw most of Indias problems and Bangladesh's problems are also due to conservative views, its just that Pakistan's problems seem to be greater IMHO
I am an Indian and the conditions you described "the rich - poor divide", "not a welfare state" etc exist in my country as well as most other countries as well.... I really did not get the point of your article except for the fact that it seems you greatly dislike liberals views ... I didnt say "liberal persons" I said "liberal" views ... because I dont think any person is black or white .... as Chris Rock says "About murder I am conservative, about prostitution I am liberal" ..... I did not get the point of your article but just wanted to say that maybe you should embrace liberal views (individual freedom for men and "women" to do "whatever" they want as long as they are not breaking constitutional law, separation of religion and state etc etc) because for the whole wide world its as clear as daylight that the problems of Pakistan are mostly due to conservative views.
Interesting perspective Bangash - what a country!
to me liberal is :
Who is free ( with concept of maximum possible individual freedom) ) Advocates/ favors progress and reforms in political and religious affairs. Unprejudiced and tolerant
This is funny. One narrative says the right wing is supporting PTI, and hence its supporters are similar to JI and JUI/PML N supporters ideologically. . And now you are saying the liberals dont let you support anyone other than PTI. . While if you ask many PTI supporters they will say the 'so called' liberals (as IK puts it) or the much more popular term...liberal fascists, are haters of Imran Khan. . Difficult to say whether PTI is confused itself, or it has managed to get scorned by all sides of the spectrum. Not liberal enough for some, and to liberal for some. Not religious enough for some, and too religious for some others.
I have always struggled with the corrupted nomenclature "liberalism and conservatism" and their application to the real world situation/s. There are very serious epistemological issues with these terms, and their application. These are more popular coinage than actually analytical tools, and there is no way one can define or apply these even if you break these into social and economic categories. Given this, it seems appropriate if we translate these words into modernity and traditionalism (developmental school). The problem is not only to define Pakistani liberal or conservative, but it is all around the world. The way American definition of liberalism differs from classical or even neoclassical liberalism is the proof of lucidity of this term. The problem is that it is just not a concept. In the plain language “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.”
@AKHAN: Sir, a liberal / secular is not anti-Islam and doesn't bash any religion or belief, as a matter of fact s/he has Faith and a Belief and believes that others have theirs and must be let alone to practice what they believe. A liberal/secular is someone who wishes to bash those who mix up their screwed up notion of religion ( any religion including one or other brand of Islam as they happen to consider 'pure' and 'truest') with anything and everything including how the affairs of a state must be run and how anyone may walk or talk. You know what I mean.
I am sure, what and who the author was representing or deemed representative of a Pakistani Liberal. One thing for sure the liberal mindset and narrative has been under attack in Pakistan and there are number of it liberal mindset has been distorted and attacked to be discredited... As the author has corrected pointed out " liberalism is rooted in individual freedom, equality, free markets and private property. To these concepts, modern liberalism has added the development of the welfare state and concern for social justice and civil rights. A liberal democracy is then a republic, which espouses and promotes such values." anyone believes in values is deemed as liberal, if anyone represent a distorted version that's an issue, however, the fundamentals of these values are not going to altered.
I think it would be worth mentioning here that there is always a disconnect between what others think of us and what we think about ourselves. While it might be disheartening to many liberals on this forum to read the first paragraph, the truth is that if you ask most of the people in the country, they will agree with the cited description. Just like how most of the conservatives think of themselves as the last bastion of civilization, while a lot of world out there thinks about them otherwise. Perhaps that means on a deeper level that both conservatives and liberals in Pakistan have gone wrong somewhere and they are unwilling to acknowledge it.
@AKHAN: No, that's not how it works. You see, "liberal" is a word. Words have definitions. Once the definition changes, it becomes something else... another word. If you still use it beyond that, it means you're not speaking correctly.
You can't be a rabid IK supporter and really be a liberal. (Some "real" liberals will support him but they do so begrudgingly from lack of options and criticize him thoroughly).
I think "liberal" is being confused with "wealthier educated upper class individual", many of whom are IK supporters and of confused political views much like IK himself. So a match made in heaven really.
I did not like the first para at all by the way. Made the whole thing start off in a mean-spirited way making it hard to take the rest too seriously.
A secular person is not anti islam. All it means all are equal in beleving their religion and getting 100 % freedom in doing so.
this is not the Pakistani Liberal its called white wanna bee!
what a primitive mindset to label people as liberal or real liberal or whatever...GROW UP!
When we talk of liberal human beings and liberal attitudes, the meaning is the same. The debates always turn into pleas for liberal tolerance, for a respect for other people's opinions and knowing that truth is not as clear as our professors or mullahs tell us. But tolerance is that counts. Intellectually it is appeasement. I do not want to tolerate those who disagree with me, but liberal people know that if I force them to change, I cannot call myself a liberal.We all know the world becomes peaceful if all accept each others. You can be an atheist, a Mullah or a hindu. This talk of fancy clothes cars and drinking is not representative of all Pakistanis, only less than 1% Search further and see the light of liberalism.
lolz poor skills copied hamid mir