The Follies of the Natives

hamidm2 #52 Great post, enjoyed reading it. One minor quibble: a shirt and cotton trousers in Pakistan in June or July is not my idea of comfort. The proper thing to wear is a t shirt and shorts if you want to be comfortable. Actually the shalwar kameez is more comfortable than a pant - and there is nothing preventing one from wearing a clean one. And one can look presentable in it if one has a flat belly and not a round one and is not sweating like a pig in it.

dost-mittar:
Need I say more about curtailing the importance of past after reading good posts by SR and hamidm2? I am glad you agreed with me about a very low percent importance to the past in the state affairs but most people from both side wouldn`t agree with us.

Various shapes and sizes of pajamas, caps, beards, sherwanis and dhotis fall within this 10 percent but their symbolic importance is enhanced none other than gandhi, jinnah, nehru, mullah, sadhus, politicians and government officials in both Pakistan and India. The irrational part of identity and nationalism is more visible than the rational one - constitution, rule of law, service to people and freedom. As long as it is not acceptable as less than 10 percent, the point of religious versus secular within it is meaningless. Once its importance is reduced, the coming to agreement on differences is easy. It is tentamount to defeat for Islam and Hinduism to be relegated to less than 10 percent importance from fundamentalists and most Pakistanis point of view. It is in fact acceptance of past as failure than past perfect and golden ages ideas. I, for one, do see last 1000 years of subcontinent as a major failure for public with no freedom, no justice, no local rule, colonialism, authoritarianism etc etc. However, the first picture one sees of Indian or Pakistani PMs, the memory of past stares right in-your-face as if this is what our identity and we are all about. I seriously believe that too much emphasis on half nakedness and pajamas/ dhotis in India too would end up hurting India`s place in the world.

Less than 10 percent importance to past discredits TNT and that is what SR meant by defective birth. However, it does not mean ONT by default. I would have never supported half naked fakirs and topi-sherwani-pajama people knowing too well what half naked fakirs of the past did. The Sufis were half naked fakirs of the past, the moral consultants, never using hands and feet for earning decent living and telling others to sweat, work hard, be this and be that and worrying about internal-external relationship with a nonsensical concept. The descendants of these half naked drive Mercedes, live lavishly, have land and property, win elections yet still begging from poor for more money - niaz, nazrana as I have received a request for donation by mail from Ajmer for the coming urs later this year
(P.S. Sorry to use this example because at another site an ardent follower of Sufis was fuming over lazy and dishonest livelihood of Shiv Kumar Batalvi for being absentee employee of the State Bank of India as if his favorites earned living honestly).

Less than 10 percent also means reducing the importance of Shah Bano case, Babri masjid and Hindutva in India and getting rid of Islam from state affairs in Pakistan. Once we get over it, then importance of pre-Islamic past for Pakistanis make more sense. Under current conditions, it would be merely intellectual curiosity of few individuals.

In cultural terms, the importance of near past can not be ignored. One can not tell us to forget Faiz A. Faiz becuase he died some 20 years ago. What is the future of cholay or pulao in cuisine? Nothing to discuss and that is why culture is best as is and let it evolve whereas languages do need intellectual and official promotion to survive. The culture is the real arena where identity should be practiced and social also to some extent but not state affairs, economy, and secular humanism.

The identity at state or national level is nothing but loyalty or patriotism. It is unfair to undermine and subordinate other identities which are basically cultural and social with decreasing overlap with each other with the distance. This becomes more important when one cultural identity is more closely tied to national identity than the rest leading to other cultural identites to start creating a national identity of their own.

The bottom line is that identity can not bring about prosperity, development, education and success but playing it too much or wrongly can be detrimental.

natives and zulus on park avenue .............

........... i don`t know much about this national identity crap but there should be a law against men wearing ``the national dress`` in public ......... for god`s sake, they are pajamas!......... half the people in pakistan simply roll out of bed in the morning and take to the streets in their night clothes without brushing their teeth or combing their hair - it is appalling! .......... the whole country looks like a set from michael jackson`s thriller or the day after a nuclear holocaust............it is depressing! ......... sure we are poor and all that, but we all don`t have to look like a bunch of beggars .........

.......... have you noticed, that the more backward, impoverished and third-worldy a country is, the more its leaders (and people) are hung up on wearing leopard skins, underwear, dead animals, bed-sheets and night gowns in public .......... you don`t see the japanese or the chinese running around in kimonos and gowns .......... as a matter of fact people in tokyo and shanghai, especially the women, look like they just stepped off the pages of vogue and glamour ..........it is hard not to stare at the smartly dressed women in tokyo - they all look like a million bucks, even the ugly ones! ...........we, on the other hand, are going in the other direction ......... it all started with gandhi who disgraced us by running around half naked with his goat and nieces in tow .......... jinnah, a man with more sense, tried to buck this trend by dressing like a civilized man but even he fell to this idiocy by putting on a silly tunic and a dead sheep on his head ............some might call it political expediency - i call it stupidity .........and nehru, a perfectly intelligent man, went around with a silly paper hat from burger king on his head ............ but everyone from mountbatten to truman humored him by saying,``how quaint, how native``............ the bushmen running around naked in the kalahari desert are native!............ it is not quaint, it is primitive............

...........bhutto, a man who normally wore tailored double breasted suits, tried to curry favor with the masses by putting on pajamas and calling it an awami suit .......like other socialist leaders of the time he also tried to dress up his minions in mao suits with gold and silver braid on the collar - luckily that didn`t last long........during zia`s time people gave up on all good things in life, discovered islam, and started wearing the awami dress to work ........and it has been down hill ever since ........some might argue that a shalwar kameez is more suited to our climate - nonsense!......... a half sleeved cotton shirt with cotton trousers is a lot more comfortable than a six-yard shalwar with a full-sleeve kurta and a waist coat .............and the only people who wear crisp starched white shalwar kurtas and freshly dry-cleaned waist coats are the politicians and drug lords - the rest of the public wears these miserable brown and gray pajamas that are washed once a week and don`t have a fly so that you can pee standing up like a man ...............now, how can you take these people seriously? ............ how can you take a man seriously when he has to squat like a woman to pee? ............how can they take themselves seriously?............walk into any government office (try the gpo in pindi saddar) and you will know what i am talking about .............it looks and smells like a fish market.............people who went to be taken seriously, dress properly......

............. and the only people who dress properly, and are therefore taken seriously, are the military - that is why they rule the country while the rest of the fools are running around in their night clothes feeling native!

p.s. next we will talk about all these silly desi women who insist on wearing native clothes from ``back home`` on park avenue ......... pat buchanan was right when he worried about assimilating zulus in manhattan ............

ferozk #49 So lets see: what is the national dress of pakistan? Sherwani and Jinnah cap. Here is an exercise for you: close your eyes, breathe deeply, and imagine a man wearing a Sherwani and Jinnah cap. Now tell me what face do you see between the Sherwani and the Jinnah cap. If we are both talking about the same country, the face will be that of Jinnah himself. As in the countless Jinnah portraits in public buildings, wearing the ``national dress`` that you wont find anyone wearing on the streets of Pakistan. Indeed, you probably wouldnt have found Jinnah in it either most of the time: only when it came time to pose for the picture or to make speeches. Even he normally wore what was then considered a farangi dress (suit, tie, and even with a monocle and fancy boots that would make any farangi proud) even more than it is today.

No sir. The concept of a national dress is just one more bs. People wear what they want to wear, and in Pakistan it is normally the shalwar kameez and/or pant shirt (with tie and jacket added in case of certain situations like workers in commercial banks, marriage ceremonies and so forth).

Is there hope?

ABSOLUTELY!


Ras

Although all of your other articles are just as well worded and equally well thought out, this one is clearly your best one ever. Not only are your arguments well reasoned, you also have deep feelings and the writing seems to have come straight from the heart. I agree with everything you’ve written but have you not left out an important angle? Perhaps you’ve considered it but decided to leave it unsaid. Maybe it`s not taking the `road less travelled` which created the problem. Perhaps either road may have lead to the same place because the problem was with the traveller?

I am, of course, referring to the idea that all the problems stem from the fundamental reality that the state of Pakistan is untenable because it was flawed in its conceptual design and therefore non-viable as an entity. In other words, could it be a possibility that the state was like a crippled child at birth, born with a genetic defect? It might have been made viable with extraordinary and heroic measures, but given the abuse and neglect in its infancy it died a natural death instead of being able to over come those odds.


What I am saying here applies to the state entity and not necessarily the country. The implication being that the state cannot be reformed. It has to be reorganized. The state entity is the lethal parasite that has choked and killed off the country. The existing state apparatus has to be dismantled and rebuilt from a scratch. In the process it may or may not retain its existing geographic jurisdiction, but the state cannot, and indeed must not, retain its original politico-legal format. The people, the culture, the intellectual heritage, the history and the economy are the things that make up the country. They need to be liberated from the clutches of the colonial-imperial-feudal nexus that is the state.

…SR

re: ana_dobarah # 35

I will have to ask his permission. What I can tell you is this. He describes the air raids; the attack on the airport and says that the Iraqi dead had no flesh or tissue - only blackened bones. The question is: what kind of weapon generates such heat to vaporise human tissue? I will try to post that email, after getting the permission.

re: dost-mittar # 17

I think that rsaxena has answered your question. It is the influence of the Christian Coalition and the role of ``the Bible Belt`` in US politics. Religion and religious groups in US are using emotion and tailoring it to suit their political aims. Rsaxena is absolutely right. GOP is fast becoming a right wing neo-religious party in America and since the party is indebted to Christian Coalition for its funding, it has assumed the outlook of CC in politics. The neo-cons originate from this world view and this also explains their nexus with the Jewish lobby. The CC believe that the messiah will come, when there is peace in the middle east and peace will only come when the enemies of Israel are defeated.

In this sense, GW Bush has made his first policy mistake and that is, to become engaged in the middle east peace process. Peace in the present international paradigm suggests that there has to be a consensus, but to have a consensus you are appeasing the enemies of Israel and delaying the arrival of the messiah! The CC will not agree to this policy, which it sees as anti-christ and against the interests of Isreal. Hence, the Isrealis and the Palestinians have do nothing; the CC will gladly disintergrate the peace process in the middle east on the basis of its own religious interpretations.

America is not a democracy but a free market. In a free maket, supply and demand create the criteria. What is the source of access to power in America? In a simple sense, it is campaign financing. What is the average amount a congressman/woman or a senator spends on re/election? How many Americans can afford a financial disburement on such a scale and after spending all this money, how is this money re-generated? As a result of the increasing cost of politics in America, what are realistic levels of American citizens representation in his government? Demographically, what group is represented in the congress and senate? What are special interests? Why is fund raising so important and when you raise funds from a $ 1000 a plate dinner, what are you promising in return?

I remember that senator Hatch from Utah would ask for $ 1000 for a plate; I remember when Bush came to Salt Lake, he charged # 10,000 a plate! I know this, because I was entering the transactions for FEC and dealing with soft and hard money! Politics in America are awash with money and money forces fund raisers at golf courses, where deals are made and the public is told of the policy announcements when all is settled and agreed! There is nothing they can do about it! The majority of the core fiancial supporters of GOP are CC and they expect a return on their investment! Politics in America is not about representation; it is about appeasing the special interests and getting relected!

Ciao

re: tahmed32 # 44

I am the least bit nationalistic, but are you telling me that a tie and a jacket is the national dress of Pakistan? The glass is half full or half empty is meaningless, because in Pakistan it is the not the question of the glass`s capacity to hold a volume of water, but the quality of the water itself! Lets follow your logic and say that the glass is half full. If I drink from this half full glass and die as a result of drinking polluted water, will it make a difference to me if that glass was half full? What is important? The glass or the water it contains? If the water is pollulated, then can I drink the glass and satisfy my thirst? If the water is pollulated and I cannot drink the glass, how do I quench my thirst? If I am thirsty, will it really matter to me even though I cannot drink, that the glass is still half full?

Optimism without pragmatism is idealism and is the reason, why an idealist calls a realist a cynic!

This the problem with Pakistan - too much emphasis on form and nothing on substance! Isn`t that what you keep telling me? Did you not say, during our agruments on Iraq war that I was putting too much stress on the form and not on the substance? What are you doing right now! Do you not see the cognitive imbalance in your logic?!

Dress code is being inforced regardless of the skin color? That is hardly encouraging, when taken in balance with everything else in Pakistan. Are you saying as long as the dress code is being inforced it is okay and that makes up for a lack of enforcement in the areas of justice, law and order, minority rights, economic equality, access to a decent education? These rights are more important than a dress code, right? Should we judge, as you say in the analogy of half-full/half empty glass, the progess in Pakistan and consider Pakistan to be developed nation, because our elitist clubs enforce a dress code? Ha ha ha!

Universial dress? Like the unilateralism of a universial American world view? LOL

Secondly; as you admitted, ``I did read the article just now...`` and you had commented before reading it in your post # 16! LOL You also mentioned once, when correcting me that you had practical experience for working with IFI, when you disagreed with my hypothesis. If you worked for IFIs and commented and made decisions without reading the reports or the data in front of you, it would explain a lot why the IFIs are in such a mess! You have clarified and explained so much! Thank You!!!!!!! Now I understand better!!! ROFL

Ciao

re: sameerJB and dost-mittar

Interesting! I never really considered this aspect of the debate! Thanks!

re: rsidhar

You have raised critical questions and I hope that there are answers forthcoming! However, remember - even a lack of an answer is an an answer in itself and can speak volumes! It is about the intent and if the intent to change is not present, then the lack of answers becomes a justification for the intent itself!

My bet is that Pakistanis will refrain from answering those questions, because those questions seek to define our basic character as a nation and a people. We, Pakistanis, are more comfortable with repeating, unthinkingly and uncritically, the offical orthodoxy than in we are in questioning it! People have talked about the identity crisis; it is true. Pakistan suffers from an identity crisis and we are so insecure in our identities, that we cannot even dare and admit that there is a crisis, let alone question it! The problem is this. In order to answer those questions you have raised, we would have to think and our educational experience is such that we are discouraged from critical thinking, because such thinking prompts the autocratic nature of the government to account for itself. You see the problem! To answer those questions, we have to admit to our past mistakes, but we cannot since, we abetted in those mistakes by our silence. You are basically asking Pakistan and Pakistanis to refute everything they have been taught and have believed in and that is extermely difficult to do!

The process is difficult, but not impossible. First, ask questions, but never be satisfied by the answers and keep peeling away the explanations until truth is exposed. This would be the easy part. The hard part would come, when that truth has to be accepted and when it is finally accepted and you have admitted and compromised with your past - in the sense of not denying it, then you can begin the process of improving yourself. Oherwise, you will continually fight a regressive battle with denial and will become bogged down in a quagmire of your own insecurities.

Ciao

a bit off track...

In another discussion someone was mentoning that the Muslim rulers of India did not take the sea seriously (sameer?)

I dont want to discuss that, but I found something perhaps people would be intrested in seeing...

this photograph goes with this text....

http://iopc.info/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=7&TopicID=1146&PagePosition=1&ThreadPage=1

`` Murud-Jangira fort.. It was the strongest marine fort in all India, built by Abyssinians in 1511and is on island south of Alibagh. The majestic island fortress of Murud-Jangira was the 16th-century capital of the Siddis of Jangira, who were descendants of sailor & traders from the Horn of Africa. It is one of Maharashtra`s most commanding coastal forts. The fort`s 12 metre high wall was impregnable to everyone, even Shivaji, the Marathas leader tried to conquer it by sea.``

SameerJB#34
A ten percent weight to the past heritage is quite adequate and appropriate. The issue I raised however related to how much of this heritage is religious and how much is it secular?

ARTICLE IS GOOD.BUT WHAT WHERE LIES THE SOLUTION.FLUENCY OF THEIR ENGLISH ACCENT...THEY LOOK LIKE MONKEY.
RICHEST GENERAL..TO SEE LUXURIOUS LIFE OF GENERAL IN PAKISTAN,GOD HIMSELF HASA WISH TO COME DOWN ON EARTH AND LIVE LIKE A GENERAL.JUST VISIT P.A.F ISB BASE,APALACE IS BEING BUILT FOR AIR CHIEF.

Inquirer #20 Thanks for the welcome. I did read the article just now, and I dont see the point. One call look at any country in the world and say that the glass is empty or that it is full. When the truth is that the glass is half full and half empty. Take the story he tells of the englishman who was refused admission at lahore club, for example, because he was wearing a pakistani dress: one look at the empty side, as FRKhan does, and say that this is a sign of our colonial mentality. However, one could look at the full side, as FRKhan does not, and say that this a sign that the dress code is enforced regardless of color of skin.
As an aside, many years ago my brother had the same experience at the Lahore Gymkhana: he had stayed overnight at this club and came for breakfast in a shalwar kameez, and was very politely told about the dress code and so had to go back an change and come back. We did not think it was any big deal, and simply had a few chuckles about it. It is interesting to see the dress code is still around. But I dont think it has to do with the english raj anymore. Too much time has passed, and coats and jackets are now a universal dress. Not too practical for the tropics, I admit. But OK to wear if you are going to be inside an airconditioned environment. So not big deal. Pakistan wont come to an end because people cant wear shalwar kameez wherever they damn well please. And the dress code would not have lasted so long if the members were not in favor of it. So, I dont see any reason for FR Khan to see the application of this rule to the briton to be a sign of any national weakness.

Any thoughts on this from FR Khan would be welcome too.

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For a long time there have been a number of retrospective articles by Pakistanis about Pakistan. On the other hand such articles by Indians have been a far and few. The main cause I believe is that Pakistan and Pakistanis are still struggling with their Identity. They have still not come to a conclusion as to who they really want to be.

They are being pulled by their desire to be like Arabs but they are not Arabs. They are far more civilized than them. When they are confronted by other Muslims and at times looked down upon they try to be Subcontinental. In the past they had the same problem. Sometimes they looked up to Persians and sometimes Turks and once in a while at Central Asia.

Until Pakistanis resolve the identity question they are always going to be confused. I am sure this article speaks to such a need. But it needs to go deeper and really answer the question of identity.