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Yoginder Sikand
Last week, unidentified gunmen shot at and critically injured Manzoorul
Hassan, editor of the Urdu magazine Ishraq in Lahore. Ishraq is
published by the Lahore-based Al-Mawrid Institute, brainchild of one of
Pakistan's few
somewhat liberal Islamic scholars, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. It is suspected,
although this has not been confirmed, that the attack may have been
planned by rival Islamic clerics or by an Islamist group angered by
Ghamidi's
moderate stance, particularly by his support for modifications in the
draconian Hudud laws in place in Pakistan that harshly discriminate
against
women and which people like Ghamidi feel are not really 'Islamic'.
Earlier this year, while on a visit to Lahore, I had the chance of
meeting
Ghamidi and speaking at his Institute. I was quite unimpressed, I must
confess. The Institute's large Moroccan-style building is fancy and
opulent
but the work it is engaged in, as explained to me by its staff, seems hardly
novel or path-breaking: producing commentaries on the Quran and
translations of the Hadith, traditions attributed to the Prophet
Muhammad, and developing
alternate perspectives on a limited range of issues of juridical
import, such as on the debate on whether or not Muslims can eat animals
slaughtered
by non-Muslims or whether swimming is 'un-Islamic' and so on. In short, the
Institute represents something of a 'liberal' Islam in tune with the
demands and aspirations of a section of the Pakistani lower- middle
classes. Steering away from fundamental questions vital to the masses,
such as those of widespread poverty, Pakistan's deep-rooted feudal
system, the nexus
between Pakistani bureaucratic, military and political elites and
their Western overlords and so on, and focussing, instead, on
intricate
theological debates and juridical niceties, the Institute and its work
seemed to me, when set against the harsh, brutal life which is the fate
of
most Pakistanis, hardly socially relevant.
Yet it is probably seen, as the attack on Manzoorul Hasan shows, as
enough
of a challenge to certain rival religious outfits in Pakistan, who find
the limited reformulations of Islamic jurisprudence offered by the
Al-Mawrid
Institute a sufficient threat to their authority. Sources in departments
concerned specifically with sectarian crimes in Lahore have disclosed
that Ghamidi had been receiving threats from various quarters for the
past year. It is possible that these threats were issued by certain
conservative or militant religious groups. Actively encouraged by the
Americans in the
course of the Afghan war, the Pakistani establishment backed many
such groups to serve its purposes in Afghanistan and Kashmir and
to stifle
democratic dissent at home. And now, as suggested by the attack on
Manzoorul Hasan, which might be the latest of a series of bloody
attacks on dissenting scholars by activists associated with certain
militant religious groups in Pakistan, these forces have gone quite out
of hand. Pakistan's reversal on
the Taliban and its shameless capitulation before American dictates
have only given further legitimacy to such groups, who probably
see moderate
voices, such as those represented by the Al-Mawrid Institute, as
playing into the hands of what are routinely described in radical
Islamist discourse as 'enemies of Islam'. The space for publicly
articulated progressive thought and even for liberal and moderate
perspectives on Islam, already
restricted in Pakistan, appears to be only further narrowing.
On the bus from Delhi to Lahore early this year, I chatted with an
elderly
Muslim man from Delhi who was travelling to Pakistan to visit his
relatives. He identified himself as a socialist. 'I don't want to go to
Lahore but my
wife insists I should', he said to me frankly. 'I get so bored there. I can
hardly find any like-minded people to talk to', he went on. 'You'll
soon discover', he warned me, 'that the level of intellectual discourse
is so
limited in Pakistan. Quite awful actually'.
I thought the man was exaggerating, but I was soon to discover that he was
not entirely wrong.
In my interactions with a wide cross-section of people in various
places that I visited in Pakistan during my one-month visit I was
shocked at the pathetic state of intellectual discourse that seemed to
pervade the country,
which I often unconsciously contrasted with the situation in India. There
are, I discovered, less than half a dozen good bookshops in the whole
of Lahore, once considered to be the intellectual capital of India,
that stock
books in English. The vast majority of these books are, curiously
enough, published in India, a few in the West and the rest, a
very small proportion,
are local Pakistani publications. Books on Pakistani society, based on
empirical realities, are almost impossible to find, although the number
of titles on the so-called 'two-nation theory' and the history of the
Muslim League, as well as on elite politics in Pakistan, run into the
hundreds. So
do books on Jinnah and Iqbal, the two major ideological heroes of
Pakistan, after whom a vast number of public institutions
throughout the country are
named. As a Lahori friend of mine quipped, 'The intellectual scene in
Pakistan is so bad that our rulers think we have almost no one else to
name
our institutions after'.
Even on Islam and Kashmir, two issues that are central to the way in
which
the Pakistani state has sought to construct the notion of Pakistani
national identity, I discovered hardly any decent literature in English
in the
numerous bookshops that I visited. Many of the few English books on Islam I
came across were actually published in India. A few others were by
Western writers, while the rest, not more than three dozen titles, many
of these being were poorly-researched and ideologically-driven
propaganda tracts of the Pakistani Jamaat i Islami and its associated
publishing houses.
Likewise, on Kashmir. In Lahore's biggest bookshop that also stocks
English books I came across an entire shelf of books on Kashmir, but
almost all of
them were written by Indian scholars, published in India and probably
represented the Indian position on the disputed territory.
Many of the relatively few English books on sale in Lahore's bookshops
are
textbooks, and several of these, particularly those on the hard
sciences, are published in India. The school texts that I glanced
through are carefully tailored to reproduce what is officially called
the 'Ideology of Pakistan', with Islamic Studies and Pakistan Studies
being compulsory
subjects in the school curriculum. The Islamic Studies texts present
Islam as the only true religion. Islam is described in terms of beliefs
and
practices in line with Sunni Islam, and this is obviously resented by
the
country's sizeable Shia minority. The books represent a monolithic,
extremely literalist and conservative understanding of Islam as upheld
by
the Sunni ulama. They are completely silent on alternate expressions of the
faith, such as those offered by dissenting sects as well as certain
Sufis known for their humanism and their critique of the soulless
ritualism and
narrow communalism that they associated with the dominant ulama and
ruling Muslim political elites of their times. The reality of lived
Islam, as distinct from the scripturalist Islam of the ulama of the
madrasas, is, likewise, completely glossed over. The Pakistan Studies
texts reflect the
same approach to Islam, and are specifically geared to drilling into
the minds of students the 'two-nation' theory, the argument of Hindus
and
Muslims being two monolithic and mutually opposed communities that can
never peacefully co-exist, this being the very rationale for the
creation of Pakistan as a separate state for the Muslims of undivided
India. Not surprisingly, some of these texts describe Hindus in
negative terms, as
being allegedly hostile, as an entire community, to Muslims and Islam.
No mention is made therein of ethnic differences and imbalances and
class
divisions in Pakistan, the aim clearly being to propagate and reinforce
the notion of a singular, monolithic Pakistani Muslim identity, one
that fits in entirely well with the demands of the state and the ruling
classes. No opportunity is missed to reinforce the 'two-nation' theory
by the state
wherever it can, and this not just through the education system. The
gigantic, rocket-like Minar-e Pakistan that stands outside the
precincts of
the Royal Fort in Lahore has plaques on every side insisting on the
veracity of the theory. An entire gallery in the Lahore museum is
dedicated to this very theme, with dozens of pictures titled 'Hindu and
Sikh atrocities on Muslims' in the 1947 Partition violence being
prominently displayed to
convince viewers of the claim to truth of the theory. Challenging the
'two-nation' theory in public in Pakistan can often invite official
wrath as
well as the ire of the mullahs. No wonder, then, that I found almost no
published critique of it in Lahore's bookshops, although in private
conversations many Pakistani friends insisted that the theory was a
bogus
myth.
The Urdu publishing scene in Pakistan is somewhat different, although I
found it almost as uninspiring as its English counterpart. Lahore's
famed Urdu Bazaar, located in a chaotic, run-down part of the old town,
consists
of several narrow lanes lined with filth-clogged drains, almost
impossible
to wade through. I made it a point to spend two entire days in the
bazaar and to visit every of the dozens of small bookshops that it
boasts of. On
the lookout for literature on lived social realities in Pakistan, I was
sorely disappointed. The vast majority of the titles on display were
about Islamic rituals and theology, hagiographic accounts of the
Prophet, early Muslim warriors, saints, rulers and ulama, treatises on
the ideological
founders of Pakistan and on the 'two-nation' theory, tomes on the
history of the Muslim League and the alleged perfidy of the
Hindus, accounts of
Pakistani rulers by their supporters and critics, besides hundreds of
texts containing gems of Urdu literature. Although important as sources
of Pakistani history and national identity, they had little to reveal
about the actual social realities of Pakistan today that I was keen on
knowing more
about, a telling reminder, once again, of the poverty of intellectual
discourse in the country.
As a student of Islamic history, I was particularly interested in
procuring
books by socially-engaged Pakistani scholars articulating progressive
positions on various issues through engaging creatively with the
Islamic scholarly tradition. However, wading through the books on
display in the
shops in the Urdu Bazaar, I that found few such texts are actually
available. This starkly suggested to me that there appears to be no
counterpart in Pakistan to the numerous Indian Islamic scholars that
have sought to creatively engage with the Islamic intellectual
tradition and the
myriad challenges posed by the pressures and demands of contemporary
life.
There
is simply no Pakistani equivalent of the Indian Islamic scholars
Asghar Ali Engineer and Maulana Wahiduddin Khan (incidentally, both of
whose books are widely read and published in Pakistan), a sad
commentary on the state of Islamic intellectual discourse in a country
that was created ostensibly in the name of Islam and in order to
protect Muslims from 'upper'
caste Hindu domination. The only noted socially-engaged Islamic public
intellectual that Pakistan has produced, the scholar Fazlur Rahman, was
forced to flee Pakistan in the 1960s and seek refuge in Canada because
of
the vociferous opposition that he faced from the Jamaat-i Islami and various
ulama groups for his progressive utterances.
The task of offering socially progressive responses from within the
broadly
defined Islamic tradition to the challenges of modernity and to the
lived realities of widespread poverty and exploitation has hardly begun
in Pakistan. Hence, today certain radical Islamist as well as
conservative ulama groups and their propagandists are able to
powerfully assert their
claims to speak for Islam quite unchallenged, offering responses that
are, overall, decidedly distasteful: fanning sectarian rivalries,
promoting
hatred against the country's religious minorities, condemning moves to
promote gender and economic justice and redress ethnic imbalances,
pronouncing communism and leftists as 'enemies of Islam' and as
allegedly conspiring to divide Muslims, and lambasting the West and
India as the very
epitome of evil. Some of the publishing houses in the Urdu Bazaar are
run precisely by such groups, and their magazines, I was told, have
hundreds of
thousands of subscribers.
'We urgently need a combination of Marx and Muhammad today', said a
friend,
a well-known leftist activist, who accompanied me to the Urdu Bazaar
and who was pained at my disappointment with the market that had
failed to yield up
the treasures I had been dreaming of procuring. 'Because religion is so
deeply-rooted in people's lives', he continued, 'we cannot ignore it.
We need to articulate socially progressive interpretations of religion
in order to make appeal to people and to prevent radical Islamists and
conservative
ulama as well as the state from monopolising the terrain of Islamic
discourse'. 'But, as you can see from the books sold in this market',
he added, 'the Pakistani Left has almost completely ignored this vital
task'.
The warning of the elderly Muslim man from Delhi whom I had met in the
bus to Lahore swirled in my mind almost each time I entered a bookshop
or research institute or even in meetings with NGO activists during my
stay in
Pakistan, in all the several places I visited. Punjab University in Lahore,
the largest university in the country, I discovered, does not possess a
single bookshop, and the only students organisation that is legally
allowed
to function on campus, or so I was told, is the Islami Jamiat-i Tulaba,
the students' wing of the Jamaat-i Islami. The day I visited the
university, one
day after the anniversary of the fall of East Pakistan to the Indian
Army and the Mukti Bahini, the campus was splattered with posters put
up by the Jamiat denouncing what it termed as 'Indian
Imperialism'. I saw a few other posters pasted on notice boards in the
university, but most of these were
about forthcoming religious events. I could not help contrast this to
what I had been reared on in the five years that I spent at the
Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, where almost every day we were treated to a talk
or a seminar by intellectuals, politicians, journalists and social
activists on a whole range of pressing social issues, almost none of
these being on theological niceties.
Notable exceptions apart, my limited conversations with students and
teachers in Punjab University proved to be hardly inspiring. A friend
suggested that I speak to the students of the Sociology department on
some
aspect of Indian society, but the head of the department was clearly
reluctant. 'Speak on the importance of studying Sociology instead', he
suggested, and, of course, I politely declined. It appeared that an
unwritten rule was in force in the university to prevent any dissenting
views being expressed that might challenge the official line of the
state from intruding. All over the university were boards painted with
quotations
from the Quran and the Traditions of the Prophet, stressing the
importance of knowledge as well as, at the same time, pious behaviour,
this probably being also envisaged as a means to ensure obedience to
the authorities. The Vice-Chancellor of the University, I was told, was
a retired senior Army
officer. He was not unique, however, with the heads of numerous other
universities and other public institutions in Pakistan being from
identical
backgrounds, probably yet another means to enforce conformity, stifle
opposition to the state and to stamp out views that might challenge the
position that the state wanted to enforce. And to make matters worse, I
was told, the Government had now started encouraging the setting up of
fancy
private universities that catered only to the elites, charged hefty
fees and paid their teaching staff fat salaries. It had also begun
attracting
non-resident Pakistanis teaching in universities abroad to come back
home to teach, offering them a salary of well over a lakh a month, or
so I was given to understand. Charges of nepotism racking this new
scheme were rife and the purpose of it was widely questioned. 'Such
people will obviously have no
commitment to the poor, the vast majority of Pakistanis', a
friend of mine pointed out.
'Socially engaged social scientists are almost extinct in Pakistan',
lamented a leftist friend I met in Hyderabad, Sindh, who works with
landless labouers, helping to rescue them from the clutches of the
landlords and their private armies. 'Such scholars', he argued, 'are
bound to be critical of the state, the ruling establishment and the
system of exploitation and
that's why we have so few of them. The state will simply not let them
thrive'. With Pakistan having been ruled by military dictators for
decades,
he went on, the space for intellectual dissent by such intellectuals
was bound to be extremely narrow. This was entirely how Pakistan's
rulers and their American patrons appear to want things to remain.
Matters, he explained, were made worse by the fact in Pakistan, in
contrast to India,
the middle class, sections of which could be expected to take up
progressive causes, is miniscule, with the vast majority of Pakistanis
being poor and
bereft of decent education. This makes the market for decent social
science literature and research and other forms of intellectual
production extremely limited, striking evidence of which is the fact
that a single copy of an English language Pakistani newspaper costs an
astronomical fifteen rupees.
Less than a dozen doctorates in the social sciences are awarded every
year by all Pakistani universities combined, and most of the few
noted Pakistani
social scientists that do exist have shifted to the West, in search of
greener pastures and the academic freedom that their own country
lacks.
The pathetic state of intellectual discourse in Pakistan has much to do
with
the country's political economy. Pakistan has the dubious distinction
of being among the countries that spend the least per capita on
education. The
Pakistani public education system is said to be in a state of complete
shambles, even worse than in India, if that can be imagined. As in
India, mass education of an emancipatory sort, is seen as a potent
challenge to ruling authorities. In Larkana district in Sindh, I was
informed by an officer in the local education department when I visited
the area, half of
the government schools do not function because the landlords are afraid
that education might help provoke pathetically poor peasants and
labourers to
protest and revolt. A similar situation is said to prevail in several
other parts of the country. And to add to that unenviable
situation, Pakistani dominant elites, like their Indian counterparts,
are least interested in socially progressive causes, in issues related
to the lived realities of the
masses and in any sort of sensible intellectual discourse and output,
using religion and nationalism as a powerful weapon to stamp out any
dissent, a
task in which they are assisted by the literally hundreds of Islamist
and ulama groups that now flourish in the country thanks to official
patronage.
The 'mainstream' NGO scene in Pakistan is no less depressing in terms
of the
possibilities it offers for socially relevant intellectual discourse,
but then the situation in India is hardly different. While I was in
Lahore, preparations were underway to organise the first ever Pakistan
Social Forum, as a precursor of the World Social Forum to be held a few
months later in
Karachi. My host in Lahore, a committed leftist activist, took me to a
meeting called by the organisers of the Forum. It so turned out that
the man
in charge of the event failed to turn up without informing the group,
this being the third time he had done precisely that. And so the few
people present in the hall remained busy gossiping among themselves,
the main topic being the politics of NGO-ism in Pakistan. In the small
group of leftist
activists that had separated themselves from the NGO-walas, a consensus
seemed to prevail that foreign-funded NGOs, notable exceptions apart,
were functioning as agents of imperialism and of the Pakistani state
and that
they were designed to quash radical challenges to the system of
exploitation. 'Heavily funded by Western donor agencies, they pay their
staff hefty salaries, make them used to flying in and out of
conferences and put them up in fancy hotels', said a young man who
writes for a communist paper published from Lahore. 'In this way,
socially engaged intellectual critique of the system is blunted and
peoples' movements are depoliticized',
he explained. Pakistani NGOs funded by Islamic charities in the Gulf
were no better, he said. 'They just build mosques and madrasas. Many of
them promote
sectarian hatred and propagate the most reactionary understandings of
Islam
that are foreign to most Pakistanis'.
It is not that the old Muslim man from Delhi was completely correct
about
the poverty of socially-engaged and progressive intellectual
discourse in
Pakistan, although I must say he was not far off the mark. During my
visit to Pakistan, that took me to several towns and a few villages in
Punjab and Sindh, I met with numerous people struggling to articulate
progressive
visions and activism on a range of issues, such as gender relations,
the rights of workers, peasants and religious minorities, Western
imperialism
and Pakistani ruling class politics, India-Pakistan relations and so
on. On my very first evening in Lahore I was amazed by the boldness of
a play staged by the Ajokha theatre group that I attended about the
life of Bulleh Shah, an immensely popular iconoclastic Punjabi Sufi and
folk hero, who
mocked the mullahs and Brahmins alike and dared to defy the authority
of the rulers of his times. Also in Lahore, I met with activists of a
leftist group
actively engaged in a struggle against brick-kiln owners and landlords
in southern Punjab and against the Kalabagh and, which threatens to
convert Sindh into a vast desert. In Tando Allah Yar, Sindh, I met
Khurshid Kaimkhani and Aslam Khwaja, both of whom are working with the
hapless Dalits
of the province, the wretched of the earth, many of whom live in a
situation of bonded labour. And in Moenjodaro, of all places, I
encountered an
activist who has translated numerous communist texts into the Sindhi
language. I could multiply the number of such instances, but, as across
the border in India, such brave souls remain on the fringes, marginal
to the shaping of 'mainstream' discourses in Pakistan.
'What
both India and Pakistan desperately need', a Lahori friend told me
while talking about the state of intellectual discourse in our part of
the world, 'are organically rooted public intellectuals that articulate
the
lived realities and concerns of the masses. Only then can the
radical transformations that we desire ever come about'. 'But',
he somberly added,
'given the pathetic state of intellectual discourse in Pakistan, that
will probably take decades to happen'.
I told him that he was probably right about Pakistan, but, I quickly added, the same was true for India as well.
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