"The State of Pakistan," a new genre of journalism

I don't know what it is about the piece I am about to comment on that made me finally write this post; it could have been one of hundreds of others that have appeared in print and online, from both Western and South Asian sources, over the past few years. Perhaps it is because I am so used to dismissing them as temporary effluvia from the security politics crowd lacking the requisite sense of history, but this time something in me responded to the message. This is Aaatish Taseer's recent article in Mint, entitled "Losing faith in Pakistan."
http://www.livemint.com/2010/08/06210142/Losing-faith-in-Pakistan.html

The interesting thing about this article is that it manages to be half remarkably insightful and half pernicious nonsense. Let's start with the good: Taseer's basic claim is that contemporary religious extremism in Pakistan aims to "cleanse the Islam of that country of its cultural contact with the Indian subcontinent." In practical terms, this refers to the imposition of Saudi-derived ideological puritanism and the political programme of Maududi's Jamaat-e-Islami set up against "the full world, the world of culture, of stories, of songs, of dress, of ornate ritual" epitomised by the "syncretic" Sufis. Taseer is undoubtedly right in saying that the societal conflict tearing Pakistan apart has far, far less to do with clashes of civilisations between West and East than with the largely internal political struggle over the forms public religion should take in Pakistan. Such a position compels us to understand the different fractions and cleavages within the various Muslim movements within Pakistan, as Manan Ahmed pointed out during the height of the "failed state" hysteria in the Western media, aka that "the Taliban are 20 miles outside of Islamabad" time:
http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/homistan/just_a_thought_v.html

The recent attacks, first on the Ahmadi mosque, then on the Data Darbar Sufi shrine in Lahore, seem to have awakened even the most hopeful and progressive commentators to the existence of a very real threat. If the country as a whole is in no immediate danger of being "Talibanised," still the audacity and increasing frequency with which the attacks are coming raises the question: who is not a kafir now? Alarmism may not be such a bad word anymore. See Raza Rumi's impassioned appeal:
http://lahorenama.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/stop-lahores-talibanisation/

Taseer also very justly points out that far more of an outcry followed the Sufi attack, even among the lamenters. In the official media, of course, passing off the Ahmadi attack as a Zionist conspiracy was not only easier but also de rigueur. On the other side, with the exception of Manan Ahmed's excellent series on the history of anti-Ahmadi legislation (archived here: http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/category/homistan), the debate is dangerously close to reproducing a "good Sufi"/"bad Wahhabi" dichotomy that has plagued the literature on Pakistan for quite some time.

One take-away point from Taseer's piece is that historians need to pay more attention to the "Islamisation" of Pakistan under General Zia and to the connections, especially via labour migration to the Middle East, between Islam in Pakistan and outside. But we should avoid imposing a dualistic frame over all past events, as William Dalrymple does when he recasts even the history of the 1857 Indian Mutiny as a struggle between the tolerant Sufis of Bahadur Shah's court and the North Indian rebel forerunners of Osama bin Laden. Such wishful thinking avoids the uncomfortable questions about Sufis' role in upholding the feudal order in Pakistan, somewhat forcefully asked in the following article with the provocative title, "The Bad Sufi":
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/03-the-bad-sufi-ss-02

To better grasp what made me uncomfortable with Taseer's presentation of the story, I re-read the introduction to his otherwise excellent translations of Manto, where he claims that he is rescuing Manto for India out of the ghetto of being considered a "Pakistani writer." By implication he is doing the same thing for Urdu. Similar to his suggestion that Pakistan's problems could be resolved by a rapprochement with some forgotten essence of "Indianness," or as he puts it, the "Indian pink" underneath the "black Arab abaya," this claim has the air of denying the validity or legitimacy of the Pakistani nation itself. Towards the end of the article, the argument gets more and more intense, and in one sentence the problem of Kashmiri azadi is thrown away as a mere fixation of insecure Pakistanis in search of an identity -- which is remarkable, even offensive, considering the massive violence and curtailment of freedoms unleashed by the Indian Army in Kashmir even as we speak. The flavour of the month:
http://kafila.org/2010/07/10/curbs-continue-on-kashmir-media-is-it-martial-law-in-srinagar/

I am, first of all, no nationalist, and least of all a Pakistani nationalist. I have repeatedly said in various conversations on the topic that Pakistan, "moth-eaten" as it was at birth and caught in the paradox between being a "state for Muslims" that was not meant to be a "Muslim state" (Jinnah's utopian dream), divided between Punjabi elites and waves of regional separatism from Bengalis to Balochis, crushed by the army and the centre, has had a sorry run of historical luck. But all that has been over the past 60 years, sab ho gaya and we cannot un-wish Pakistan out of existence. Every single time a Western or Indian commentator suggests that Pakistan is facing an "existential" crisis and goads this enormously diverse and stratified population to breezily "re-think" the basis of their country and to learn "new narratives," the implication remains that the people of Pakistan are somehow a "problem people," engaged for over half a century in the illicit enterprise of having a country. History can't be re-written overnight; as Marx once wrote, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please." In Pakistan's case, the fight for social justice, democracy, and pluralism can only start from the rubble around us, brick by brick. It might also have to happen under the same green-and-white flag at the end of the day.

Ayesha Jalal began her Manzur Qadir Memorial Lecture of 1989 in Lahore, by saying that she loved Pakistan "with the same complicated and consuming passion" with which Braudel loved France. The problem with most of the purveyors of the "State of Pakistan" brand of journalism in India and the West is that they wish to save Pakistan without ever having loved it, at least a little bit.