by Qandeel Shaam
What is patriotism but the love of the food one had as a child – Lin Yutang
There are many questions I struggle to solve – for instance, does the soul weigh 28 grams, why 72 virgins and why not just 1? Is Lichtenstein a country? Why do the Brits call private schools ‘public’, why is the green tea pink? How does Kamran Khan always manage to look like a very sad and cynical koala bear?
But there is one question that has persistently sat like a shrapnel in my mind: What does it mean to be Pakistani, what is Pakistaniat?
I’ve yo-yoed between Pakistan and Europe all my life, and with the passage of time this question has come to mystify me more and more. Moments of reflection over what your national identity is, and what it means, usually occur when you’re not in your home country. Maybe it has something to do with being labelled a “Pakistani†or feeling like an outsider, but living in the West can really intensify one’s ethnical awareness. This often results in an exaggerated sense of national identity where you see Pakistanis in the West acting more Pakistani-like than those living in Pakistan! For a brief time I was also overcome with a disposition to jingo, but then I moved to Pakistan….
Now you have to understand: for a Pakistani to move back to Pakistan after having proudly performed a stint of patriotism in the West can be quite a shocking experience. Whatever you thought was Pakistani can very quickly evaporate into the coiling miasma of confusion that shrouds our country. The contretemps first jolts and then disillusions you, because you slowly come to the realization that Pakistan is positively mired in an identity crisis.
You have the Western-wannabe’s and the religious extremist-wannabe’s. An extant grey zone that falls in between is either too small or too muted to buffer these two extremes. The Western-wannabe’s are primarily concerned with being liberal without embracing liberalism: for example, aunties who mull for hours when deciding just how deep they should let their plunging necklines plunge before it starts to look too inappropriate for a charity fundraising event to help emancipate the poor. The same aunties are also dedicated to ensuring that the only ‘liberty’ their maids ever see is a market in Lahore.
On the other hand you have the religious extremist-wannabe’s. Their narrow, retrograde interpretation of Islam creates new lines – and intensifies old ones – of demarcation based on belief, sect, creed, even beard length (!). It preaches Islamic unity but is practiced on the paradoxical premise that intolerance (even violence) against people with differing isms is condonable.
Western- and religious extremist-wannabes have their own sets of insecurities and prejudices and view everyone through such a discriminatory prism. These groups and the forces they exert deserves exclusive attention, but for the purposes of this article it is suffice to say that the dichotomy of Westernism and religious extremism in Pakistan has caused more friction between Pakistanis, propelling the drift away from a core Pakistaniat, a sense of oneness.
So when I moved back to Pakistan I found that oneness to be lacking; after years of living up to the facade of a “Pakistani†in the West I found Pakistan itself to be devoid of any such identity. I think that generally speaking Pakistanis have always had a clique mentality, but it’s augmented and intensified. So you see now multiple little groups all bopping their heads against one another.
And yet we speak of being Pakistani and Pakistaniat. We don’t just speak of it we feel it as well. When I am in Europe I again feel Pakistani. How can we feel something that doesn’t really exist?
The article opened with a quote from the Chinese writer Ling Yutang,
“What is patriotism but the love of the food one had as a childâ€
. I interpret this as memories of our childhood and the nostalgia they bring, and how it’s from these memories and nostalgia that there emanates a sense of self identity. So if I’m in Europe and eating samosa chaat or listening to a Pakistani song or qawali that was popular in my youth, it will almost always invoke a warm feeling of nostalgia that reminds me of where I come from. I’m not sure whether I should consider it a tragedy that the only vestiges left of the Pakistaniat I used to feel and know have become hazy reminisces, or whether I should feel glad that the feeling is not lost all together.
Photo Credits: Photos for this post are taken from flickr.com
MQ, About 2. I think not just the figure but the entire idea is metaphorical. Milk is complete food in itself and honey has its own potent therapeutic qualities. Else a lactose intolerant person like myself who can’t take more than a teaspoon of honey at a time either this would not be an attractive thought. I think the idea is more intangible than physical. Problems arise as you can see when people can’t go beyond the physical life when thinking about these ideas. Gulzar wrote a terrific ghazal years ago on a related topic that goes beyond the physical world. Says:
hum ne daikhee hey inn aankhoan ke mehkti khushboo
pyar ko pyar hee rehney do koee naam naa do
SIRF EHSAAS HEY YE ROOH SE MEHSOOS KARO
haath se choo key issay rishtoan kaa ilzaam na do
Everyone can see and decribe a beautiful rose glowing in a garden but it is hard to describe how its frangrance is felt, which is the other and much bigger part of that experience. I think it is that part discussed in the lines you mention.
Just a random comment since you had me thinking on the topic.
Qandeel,
To your question of identity, it is a complex issue. Let me try to paraphrase what Huntington said in his famous (or infamous?) Clash of civilizations: When people from countryside or small towns move to big cities — in the same country or to other countries — they become separated from their roots. They interact with large number of strangers and are exposed to new sets of relationships. To give a meaning and purpose to their new lives they coalesce around their own little communities. They need new sources of identity, new forms of stable community, and new sets of moral precepts to provide them with a sense of meaning and purpose. Patriotism, chauvinism or Pakistaniat, if you will, meets those needs. In other cases religion, both mainstream and fundamentalist, meets such needs.
Now to your easier questions that you asked in the beginning of your post.
1. Does soul weigh? Whoever determined its weight — 28 grams or 21 — was sloppy science.
2. Why 72 and why not just 1? I think the figure is metaphorical, signifying abundance, just like rivers of milk and honey instead one glass of milk or a couple of tablespoons of honey a day, which should be more than adequate for a healthy and happy person.
3. Why Brits call private schools public? It is probably because in the olden days people used to teach their kids at home. Later when formal private schools opened and people started sending their children to them they referred to them as public schools as opposed to tutoring at home.
4. Green tea refers to the color of dried tea leaves, which in the case of green tea or relatively green. You are looking at the color of the liquid in the cup.
5. About Kamran Khan
Ibrahim,
Well, I brought it up because of the reference to the 72 virgins. That’s all and it’s a weak link as you said.
I would like to correct one thing. Men outnumbered women in the past (girls and women were more likely to die for all kinds of reasons) and men still outnumber women in populous countries like China and India. There are a greater number of boys born in any given population, about 118 to 100 (Baby boys also have a higher rate of neonatal death, so this disparity tends to drop a bit over the 1st year of life). There is a majority of women in a few developed countries because in the presence of good health care women live longer. This majority is not a large one (52%) and consists of the elderly. So your argument is specious, and ignores the point of the hadith, which is that women will be rotting in hell because of their inherent sinfulness.
Now not so long ago the Christians were arguing about whether or not women even had souls, so I suppose saying that they will all go to hell represents progress of a sort? :(
I didn’t get a copy of the maulvi’s poisonous little tome for myself, and I have forgotten the details. I wouldn’t mind having it now so I could refer to it, of course.
I don’t think it’s necessary since you do already know the Hadith, and are willing to make excuses for it. It’s interesting how people get irritated when someone refuses to ignore what they would like them to ignore.
But, I do thank you for taking the time to answer and if you provide references to the relevant Hadith I will have a look at them. It’s some comfort to know that as time passes Muslim scholars feel the need to explain this away–it’s marginally better than simply accepting it at face value. But the elaborate constructs based on false logic necessary for this I find troublesome, and there are always those folks, like the maulvi, who are insist that it simply means exactly what it says. Can we blame them?
Ladies/Gentlemen
Pakistaniat is what Pakistan was on 27 th of Ramadan
AlMubarak the day of Al Qadr when Quran-e Hakeem
was completed for mankind and humanity, let this be informed and instructed:
Innama akmalto lakum dinokum
Innadinah indillah-i-Islam
No other Taghoot Pakistaniat shall stand firm
14th August 1947
Mustafar Qadir, thanks for the article by Shahid Alam – I think the point about aping the apes is very poignant. It