The Bubble Bursts

When the levy breaks

For six years, or ever since General Pervez Musharraf knocked over the Nawaz Sharif government in a military coup, Pakistan was gradually (and supposedly), put on a cultural course that was to herald in major changes in the way we looked at things like the media, society, politics and the arts.

The coup and what it promised in this respect seemed to be a natural happening, especially in the event of major shifts in the political, economic, media and sociological parameters after the end of the Cold War.

It was natural because Pakistan had not kept pace with these changes, having gotten stuck in the ways of ruling and perceiving life constructed in the eighties.

The only thing that had changed by the time the nation entered the nineties were the many so-called democratic governments’ growing rhetoric and action regarding the hyped post-Cold-War trends such as privatization and neo-capitalist economics.

However neither did the two Benazir Bhutto governments, nor the two run by Nawaz Sharif coupled this action and rhetoric with matters such as the much needed depoliticalization of religion (the scourge of the Pakistan of the eighties), and nor did they take any effective steps to free the society from the prevailing burden of nationalistic chauvinism and religious fanaticism.

The social confusion (and the many acts of moral hypocrisy that such an arrangement created) never got addressed.

Have a cigar

Modern (or shall I say “post-modern?”), urban societies are strange beasts. They are not always what governments and the state perceive them to be and nor are the governments and the state the way these societies perceive them to be.

It is the popular news and cultural media that plays perhaps the most vital role in the creation of perceptions between the two. And here is where I shall once again put an accusing finger at all those in this country who are in positions of creating these perceptions.

For example, with the change that charged in after the Musharraf coup, the dramatic expansion of the country’s electronic media was at the forefront of this transformation.
And if one is to analyze the change in this context across the last six years, one can say Musharraf was successful in creating a perception of a rapidly unfolding cultural change.

Almost every private TV channel in Pakistan can actually make Pakistan seem to be a pretty liberal and open-minded society.

But, of course, the reasons behind this are purely economic. Because since these channels’ survival (and profits), are squarely based on the amount of advertising they get from multinational and other corporate concerns, these companies’ brands and products require a market/society that is open to free corporate economics and to the liberal, consumption-friendly lifestyles projected by their brands’ advertising.

Thus, these channels continuously blanket their screens with what is really a cultural façade. Because the highlighting of certain social and cultural truths behind this façade can cost them advertising revenues.

The channels, like the advertisers, are busy projecting cultural moorings more suited to modern capitalist needs, but far from the ground realities.

What’s more, conscious of this dichotomy, they try to address this by making another set of certain perception-building adjustments: They bring in religion to supposedly balance the mix.
And more dangerously, this is done in a rather cynical manner. Quite like the way religion was treated by the Zia dictatorship and then by Nawaz Sharif.

Perceiving the society as spiritually gullible, spectacular religious stunts like azaans, naats, “religious debates” and advise shows are undertaken right along-side programming according to the dictates of the capitalism-friendly liberal façade (soap operas, pop shows, fashion shows, etc.).

And so much of this strange mix and juxtaposing has taken place in the last six years, that many did start to believe that the Pakistani society has finally been freed from ill-informed ideas and perceptions of religion.

The perception propagated was of a Pakistan now riding high on a wave of modern global/free economics, with a culture that was religiously well informed and “moderate,” and socially liberal.

But alas! Two days of insane rioting and psychotic mob violence in Lahore and Peshawar changed all that. The so-called liberal revolution of the last six years has come crashing down, exposing the façade and superficiality of it all.

The big black

The images of rioting in which many rioters were caught in acts that smacked of sheer hypocrisy was certainly disheartening for the frontline purveyors of Musharraf’s liberal revolution.

The regime and the private media (both print and electronic), which were celebrating this “revolution” had not only started to believe their own hype and vested projections of society, but in fact, these can also be blamed for actually further fueling all the confusion and moral narrowness that first started to build the culture of moral hypocrisy many years ago.

Because if they thought that rigid religious reactions to the ways of modern corporate capitalism and cultural liberalism that they were projecting can be curbed by cynical religious exhibitionism in the shape of naats and loud religious programming, they should now realize that a society that has been heaped by tons and tons of politicalized religious maneuvers and sheer moral hypocrisy ever since the 1973 Ahmadi riots, never did recover.

It is still in the grip of an always edgy predicament which keeps collapsing and always turning into acts of tyranny, violence, hatred and hypocrisy in the name of Islam.

What the new private media really needed to do was address this hypocrisy which finally became a largely accepted part of Pakistan’s everyday social and political culture, especially in the eighties.

Careful with that axe

Isn’t it surprising, that this culture of moral hypocrisy has only rarely been addressed by those forms of art and artistes which aspire to go beyond the usual disposable cultural expressions.

One can only pick among a few Qawaalis by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali and Aziz Mian Qawaal, an attempt to face religious hypocrisy.

And ironically, there is no such case to be found in the country’s modern pop scene, whether it may be Alamgir many years ago, the Vital Signs in the nineties or all the Jals and Atif Aslams of today.

In fact, not only more and more of these are happy for having nothing to do with songs beyond personal emotional ups and downs, many have enthusiastically followed the footsteps of the country’s electronic media and film industry, in which nationalistic chauvinism and religious exhibitionism are cynically expressed side-by-side with the usual, meaningless pop paraphernalia (commonly called “healthy entertainment”).

One can not only pick upon people like Junaid Jamshed and Najam Shiraz who seemed to have fallen way towards the right rides of the political and ideological divide, because how is one to describe the sudden exhibitions of chauvinistic patriotism and cynical Islamic jargon spouted by everyone from Ali Zafar, Abrar to Javad Ahmed to even Shaan, Meera and Reema?
In other words how can one expect hypocrites to address hypocrisy?

The truth is, they too have become quite aware that it is quite okay to exhibit this kind of a dual personality in a society where hypocrisy has become a means of survival.

This generation of pop stars, directors, actors, models, audiences, writers, et al, is just doing what their state, governments and more so, the media deemed as something which is okay. Follow a couple of raunchy pop numbers with a standard naat or patriotic song, and you’re “safe.” Safe as in remaining in the good books of your corporate sponsors and as well in the big green ones kept by the always jumpy reactionary lot.

But the message being sent to the society as a whole is something totally different. Because then isn’t it okay for a man incensed by the Danish cartoons to crash into a European telecommunications company’s office on the Mall chanting Islamic slogans, burn it down but at the same time making sure he can get his hands on as many cellular phones (all European and Japanese), as he can get? Isn’t it okay then for man to pour acid on a woman’s face because she wouldn’t marry him, or wanted to marry someone else. I mean how dare she! Isn’t she a good Muslim woman?

When the music’s over

It was rather naïve on part of this government and the media to believe that the country can be “liberalized” with a doze of modern market economics, some liberal cultural posturing and of course, cynical religious exhibitionism which has actually ended up worsening the state of sectarian chaos and religious hypocrisy that has been eating up this nation for so many years now.

It is this hypocrisy that needs to be addressed.

The Pakistani state is by now just too tied up by its own ideological contradictions, limitations and idiosyncrasies to become an effective tool in this respect. The onus lies on the nation’s media and their commercial backers. They will have to realize that façades can only generate superficial and short term gains. They will just have to look at the political and social sides of the issue as well, instead of just the commercial and economic sides. Because these are just their sides, quite alien and away from what makes the troubled political and stained social milieu of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.