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Blog By Ziyad Faisal
To limit ourselves to an imagined version of what Mr Jinnah wanted would mean limiting our political vision and perhaps the very frontiers of our political morality Jinnah’s Pakistan

When a suicide-bomber targets a market-place, a rabid Islamist kills a figure who is not pious enough or Independence Day comes, we are reminded of the psychosis of the Pakistani state. We are reminded that in addition to shaky material foundations, the Pakistani state rests upon highly flimsy and contested ideological grounds. At such times, there is almost always a chorus from the literate urban middle-classes of the country: they want “Jinnah’s Pakistan”. For the more conservative sections of our urban middle-class, the Pakistan they long for is the “laboratory” which Jinnah claimed he sought, to implement Islamic values. For the more liberal sections of the urban middle-class, the Pakistan they want was described by a secular Jinnah in his speech on August 11, 1947. The more perceptive reader will already realize that while every historical figure can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways, if a single leader can be held up by secularists, conservatives, nationalists and Islamists alike, perhaps the leader himself was not so sure about certain things.

But what exactly was Mr Jinnah’s own vision for Pakistan, and how did it interact with the nature of the Pakistan Movement and the realities of post-1947 Pakistan? To understand the yearning for “Quaid-e-Azam ka Pakistan”, one must look at the founding myths of Pakistan and Jinnah’s place therein.

Almost any child who goes to school in Pakistan learns a certain story. The story involves a young man, burning the proverbial midnight oil as he studied at night, trying to shield the light he was using with cardboard sheets, so as not to disturb his siblings. When asked by his sister as to why he would not simply go to bed, he said something along the lines of how important this hard work was, for him to become a great man. The Pakistani reader will recognize immediately the young man we are talking about: the Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Most modern nation-states actively propagate their foundational myths: based on a kernel of truth but embellished greatly with fantasy, exaggeration and historical omissions. It is only natural that such myths centre around the integrity, heroism or ambition of one or more “founding fathers” who were instrumental in creating the state it in its modern, institutional form. So, for instance, Israel has its Bar Kochba and its Ben Gurion. Turkey has its Attaturk leading the fight for independence from barren Anatolia. The United States has its George Washington, who supposedly would not lie to his father about cutting a cherry tree, even as a boy. Latin American countries have their Simon Bolivar, Italy has its Garibaldi, Ireland has its Michael Collins. The Indian state has its own pantheon of founding fathers, from Asoka to the Rani of Jhansi, all the way down to Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose. Even Saudi Arabia has its epic tale of Bedouin raiders from the sand-dunes of Najd turning into majestic kings and defenders of the Holy Kaabah.

As for the foundational myths of Pakistan, let us bear in mind the following: every modern nation-state is ultimately a very artificial social construct, and the more artificial a state, the more artificial its founding myths.

And what is the Pakistani child taught about the founding fathers of the country? Well, if we put aside the valuable nation-building efforts of Muhammad bin Qasim and Mahmud of Ghazni, what we are left with is essentially Allama Muhammad Iqbal and, of course, the Quaid-e-Azam. Iqbal, as a brilliant poet and an aspiring philosopher, who dreamt of Pakistan. Mr Jinnah, the great political leader who brought this vision to fruition. Such is the clichéd narrative we are given.

In that famous story about the hard-working youthful Jinnah, the Pakistani student is being taught that a boy in his mid-to-late teens had already within him a young Quaid-e-Azam: the Great Leader. He would go on to study the legal system of the British colonialists, gain the respect of the British and the adulation of the Muslim masses of South Asia and eventually this epic tale culminates in the heroic Muslim League’s achievements of Partition and its accompanying bloodbath.

The historical record suggests that the budding Leader was not exactly convinced about the need for communal Muslim politics until at least the early 1920s. He was, after all, the chief architect of the Lucknow Pact of 1916: the “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” as Sarojni Naidu famously described him. Even as late as 1946, Jinnah as a practical politician could entertain the possibility of some sort of compromise with the Congress leadership and the British. The Muslim League leadership would have been satisfied with adequate guarantees of limited autonomy for Muslim-majority regions of Punjab, Sindh and Bengal. The Pashtun leaders of the north-western Frontier, of course, were not to be taken on board, because their loyalty to the Congress amounted to some sort of treachery. As for the Baloch, one imagines, it was assumed that they need not be considered in any calculations: they would somehow automatically be convinced to join the new nation-state and forget centuries of distinct history.

The Muslim League itself, founded in 1905-06 by disinherited and disgruntled members of the former Muslim elite of South Asia, was not committed to mass politics or independence from British rule – and certainly not an independent Pakistan. Unlike the populist appeals of Congress leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and others, the Muslim League’s political programme was for a long time directed towards the Aligarh-educated ex-nobility among Muslims. In the 1940s, were it not for a last-minute alliance with Muslim feudal lords in Punjab and some urban elements from Sindh, the Muslim League could never have mustered the political resources to make their demand for an independent Pakistan into a reality.

Conservative nationalists and Islamists in Pakistan are likely to be disappointed by the real Mr Jinnah. He was an intelligent, British-educated barrister, and had little time for the discourse of village mullahs. Steeped in the traditions of British liberalism, Jinnah could bring only a tiny minority of the Muslim clergy to his side even in the 1940s. It is obvious that he was looking for some form of constitutional liberal democracy, no matter how inspiring the pan-Islamic yearnings of Allama Iqbal might have been.

But perhaps our secular liberals are even more likely to be disappointed, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Jinnah laid out a set of principles for a secular Pakistani state in his speech to our first Constituent Assembly, on the 11th of August, 1947. To quote his memorable words on that occasion:

“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State. “

While these are admirable sentiments, perhaps we can be forgiven for pointing out the glaring contradiction here. If a citizen’s religion is not the business of the state, how does one explain the creation of Pakistan as a separate state? If it were not differences in religion with the Hindus and other religious communities of India, what else was it that motivated the Muslim League to demand Pakistan?

Allow me go one step further and remind the reader of the many occasions on which Mr Jinnah invoked Islamic rhetoric in his various speeches to justify the idea of Pakistan. With apologies beforehand, allow me to recall that it was the same Mr Jinnah who would not accept his daughter marrying a non-Muslim man, even though he himself had married a non-Muslim woman. One is reminded of the typical mindset of the contemporary Pakistani Muslim father or brother.

For years, Mr Jinnah brilliantly argued for federal autonomy in Muslim-majority provinces…until Partition happened and the Pashtuns, Bengalis, Baloch and other nationalities within Pakistan demanded the same autonomy. For years, Mr Jinnah pointed out the distinct cultural identity of South Asian Muslims…until Partition happened and Bengalis asked for their language to be given the status of a national language. Urdu and Urdu alone, Mr Jinnah firmly reminded them.

I understand that quite a few readers ought to be exasperated by now. What am I trying to say? What exactly was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? Was he socially liberal or conservative? Was he secular or not? What future did he envision for Pakistan?

The historical record shows that Mr Jinnah was himself has given us adequate arguments for just about any side we choose. Despite the personal integrity, intelligence and political skill of Mr Jinnah, it has to be recognized that the Muslim League was not exactly what it claimed to be. It was supposed to speak for the Muslims of South Asia, but its actual representative credentials were not very credible, even in the “moth-eaten and truncated” (to quote Mr Jinnah) Pakistan of 1947.

To limit ourselves to an imagined version of what Mr Jinnah wanted would mean limiting our political vision and perhaps the very frontiers of our political morality.

What sort of Pakistan does the hari from Sindh want? What sort of Pakistan does the silenced rape victim want? What sort of Pakistan does the tortured body of the young Baloch student want? What sort of Pakistan does the textile worker from Faisalabad want, considering he is paid some 6000 rupees a month? What sort of Pakistan does the terrified Ahmadi want? What sort of Pakistan do you want? What sort of Pakistan do I want?

You see, perhaps the real question is not what our founding father(s) wanted, but what today’s unfortunate Pakistanis want.

Perhaps it is time to consider a possibility: that the laboratory for implementing Islamic teachings was created, and the experiment went horribly wrong. And perhaps it is time to consider another possibility: given the many different interpretations which Mr Jinnah left himself open to, might we be forgiven for concluding that this is it? That this, where we live today, is Jinnah’s Pakistan in all its glory?

**crosses fingers**

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20110624&page=20

	Successfully reaching Europe does not mean an escape from poverty

	An immigrant vendor sells miniature Eiffel Towers in Paris

I listen to this track a lot, its beautiful and keeps you going:

One by one, regimes which we thought were “stable” for the foreseeable future faced revolts from a politically conscious population. The rulers in the Arab world have used various slogans from monarchist filial piety to secular nationalism in order to maintain hegemony and deprive millions of people of democratic rights.

But clearly, this will not work any more. What we see in the Arab world today are millions of people who seem to have suddenly become conscious of history itself and their role in it. Rather than back off, they seem to have realized that this particular moment in their history is an opportunity: one which they cannot afford to loose.

While the uprisings have taken a very different direction in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, they spring from similar social roots. Populations deprived of a democratic platform to express their demands for inclusion and social justice are taking matters into their own hands. The rumblings of revolt are beginning to be heard in Syria, Yemen, Jordan and even in the heart of conservatism and reactionary politics in the Arab world: Saudi Arabia.

By trying to temper the radicalism of Egypt’s revolution using the Egyptian military, by allowing Saudi Arabia to invade and help the Bahraini monarchy crush protesters and by trying to co-opt the Libyan rebels through military action against Qaddhafi, at every step Washington has shown that it was taken by surprise just as much as the rest of us.

And in the meanwhile, Israel’s rulers watch with apprehension. The Arab people have already proven that popular revolution is still a relevant political concept in the 21st century, that it is very much on the cards in the Third World. All of this threatens the very basis of Israeli (and American) strategic thinking.

The Arab revolutions, in short, remind us of something which years of corporate media and state propaganda tried to make us forget: i.e. the universality of demands for democracy, social justice and human rights.

There are other lessons too, and nuances which I would like to go into at a later time. But that will be some other time…

I begin with the literary definition of “dystopia”, provided by Wikipedia, because it is just what I need:

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-: bad-, ill- and Ancient Greek: τόπος: place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia,^[1] or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia is, thus, regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of technology going “too far” and how humans individually and en masse use technology. A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty for most of its inhabitants and a large military-like police force.

One of the things that I’ve realized about dystopian fiction is that even though it is supposed to show a possible future, many of the things it depicts are realities in the present. So in a way, we need not wait for (and fear) what is being depicted, because so much of it is already happening. The question is not so much about how to avoid this happening in the 23rd century, as much as how to deal with it in the here and now.

Dystopian fiction, if its done properly, becomes a stark reminder of how many of our civil and individual liberties have already been taken away by the state. And when I say “the state”, I mean any modern nation-state: one which exercises sovereignty in the Westphalian sense and employs legitimized coercion in the Weberian sense.

The most alarming aspect of our Dystopian existence is everyday city life. Think about it: one cannot walk down a street in a major European city without seeing a video surveillance warning on every corner. One cannot walk into a commercial flight without being scanned to the depths of their underwear. One cannot get a residence permit (for Heaven’s sake) without first registering with the local police: even if you are in a country legally.

Here’s the feeling I get:

All around us is a concrete jungle. In this concrete jungle, we all live our boring little lives in a compartment for which we pay a monthly rent (or perhaps save up enough to buy the compartment). In that compartment, there is a screen on which Big Brother (the state) tells us his side of every story. Outside on the street, there are screens from which Big Brother watches our every move.

And the worst part of this urban existence is: nobody seems genuinely happy. Everyone is biding away their time. Waiting for that big break: just a few more months (and then years) of your current drudgery, then you’ll be fine. Just a few more of your rights as a human taken away, and then you’ll be free.

Big Brother knows what is best for you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about urban existence in today’s world, and what it means for an individual. This of course raises, for me at least, the issue of social alienation for the individual living in an urban environment.

The classical Marxian approach is to view alienation of the individual in economic terms: i.e. how they have a subjugated position within the relations of production in a society, and how this results in a lack of control over their existence as social beings. While I accept this as valid, I am particularly fascinated (and disturbed) by other aspects of how an individual is alienated: i.e. the psychological impact of an urban environment on a person. David Harvey touches upon some of these issues brilliantly in his work on  spatial allocation in a city and the social-psychological factors involved there.

In a way, my reading of Harvey’s work on urban areas leads me back to the classical Marxian framework for understanding social alienation. The way I see it, the city is structured in a certain way to facilitate the productive processes of capitalism at any given time, and its spatial arrangement is geared towards reinforcing the relations of production in society.

If you haven’t followed all I’ve said so far, imagine we were looking at the map of a city, with me pointing at various points on the map:

In order to maximize profits, this is how the city has to be laid out. The rich neighbourhoods must be right here, next to the beach, but not too far from the mega shopping mall here, with good roads and easy access to the boulevards here with the fashion-clothing chains. And the cheap apartment blocks must be here, close to the bus routes that lead into the industrial area here, but not too far from the cheap super-markets here, so those plebes can stock up on huge and tasteless vegetables and starchy food and have enough energy for another day of work at the assembly line. And the ghetto must be right here, in this godforsaken part of town, and it must not get anywhere close to the boulevards, and the routes leading out of the rich neighbourhood must not intersect with the narrow lanes here that take you out of the ghetto.

Of course a serious study of urban development is a lot more complex than this, and many more factors come into play.

And who does all this planning? Some of it happens by itself: an urban environment evolves a certain way under commercial pressures. Over time, changing commercial realities lead to a thorough re-structuring of most of today’s large cities.

But of course, there have been instances where a lot of this was done with a “master plan” too. There there have been examples of massive urban re-structuring in many parts of the world. Harvey provides a fascinating study of how this happened in Paris, including a social history of the work carried out by 19th century urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Harvey and others have understood the “renovation” of Paris in the light of capitalist modernity, its social pressures and its imperatives.

The reader will be fascinated to learn that one of the reasons why Haussman was so interested in building wide avenues through Paris was to ensure better policing. Narrow, constricted lanes were the scene of many of the iconic barricades set up by the urban poor of Paris throughout the 19th century during periods of revolutionary turmoil and revolt. Widening the urban routes helped Napoleon III’s regime in “controlling the mob” and allowed for suspicious activities to be observed more easily by state officials.

Dystopia, dear reader, took root the moment modernity came to the city.
But more on this later…

There can be no happy man on earth,
No one can work well on this planet
While that nose continues to breathe in Washington
Asking the old bard to confer with me
I assume the duties of a poet
Armed with a terrorist’s sonnet

Because I must carry out with no regrets
This sentence, never before witnessed,
Of shooting a criminal under siege,
Who in spite of his trips to the moon
Has killed so many here on earth
That the paper flies up and the pen is unsheathed
To set down the name of this villain

Who practices genocide from the White House
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Many educated young people today, having been raised in a de-politicized cocoon on a diet of ultra-consumerism, would probably attribute such words to an Islamic fundamentalist. After all, only a raving Jihadist lunatic could be so firmly opposed to US militarism and aggression, right?

But these words are not from the latest video-tape which Osama bin Laden mailed to Al-Jazeera. They were written by Pablo Neruda, the iconic 20th century poet of social justice and passionate love. The practitioner of genocide who he refers to is none other than Richard Nixon.

This is a poet, a sensitive soul, a thinking soul. Surprising, isn’t it? It turns out that all sorts of people can be very angry at the US for its policies in the Third World.

I was immediately reminded of this poetry by a recent New York Times video report, about some Pakistani pop musicians and their opposition to US policies in the region, entitled “Tuning out the Taliban”, by Adam B. Ellick.

For those who haven’t seen it, take a look:

Never in its history has Pakistan been the focus of so much Western media attention. Just recently, Hillary Clinton launched a “charm offensive” against our people, amid a flurry of coverage by the Pakistani media.

Ellick’s original report in the NYT and the Pakistani responses to it have made for a fascinating case study on how political leanings, cultural critiques, music and the media interact in the deadly battleground of America’s War on Terror.

Nadeem Farooq Paracha, aka NFP, a prominent cultural critic (who is interviewed in the NYT video report itself), chooses to dismiss legitimate concerns about American militarism. For him, the only Pakistanis to be bothered by distractions such as US drone attacks would be conservative, patriotic products of the 90s. So it would follow that any Pakistani who wishes to prove their secular credentials must cheer on the circus of military dictators, civilian thugs, warlords and religious bigots who play a prominent role in America’s War on Terror. After all, this sage distinguished himself earlier with his barrage of cultural criticism against college students who opposed General Musharraf’s rule…

Another commentator, a columnist in the Dawn (a prominent English daily), chooses to nod along with Ellick, lamenting the lack of criticism for the Taliban in Pakistani pop music. For her, Pakistan’s problems are homegrown and “we” are at fault if “we” live today in a violent, poverty-stricken cesspool. Of course she feels no need to define who “we” are. She ignores the fact that “we” constitute a large and stratified society in Pakistan. Whether “we” are a junta of military commanders, a menagerie of Jihadist mullahs, a gang of corrupt politicians or the brutalized people of Pakistan, it is of no great consequence to the writer. In her universe, “we” ought to have stopped the US from arming Islamic fundamentalists who threw acid in the faces of women who didn’t cover up. “We” ought to have convinced Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq not to strangle democracy and human rights in Pakistan so that he could qualify for Reagan’s largess. “We” must take responsibility for the blindness of men such as Zbigniew Brzezinski: Reagan’s pundits of Freedom and Democracy. If “we” refuse to take up the burden of these sins, the worthy writer sees little need to distinguish us from right-wing Pakistani analyst Zaid Hamid and his hordes of admirers – who blame every flat tire on an imaginary nexus of the CIA, Mossad and RAW. For her, then, “we” are all a mass of delusional, xenophobic “ostriches” who refuse to see the Taliban coming to get us.

Others, especially bloggers, have correctly pointed out the inherently ridiculous nature of Ellick’s brand of reporting. But they seem more interested in scoring polemical points against the obvious flaws in the report. Many of the underlying issues influencing Western reporting, such as racism, stereotyping and NATO militarism are not being addressed.

Ellick misses the obvious fact that songs, concerts, music fans and political lyrics are by themselves a huge rejection of the Taliban and their ultra-Puritanical worldview. He fails to understand that “pop music + Taliban” does not compute. Orientalist delusions can be hard to cure.

Ellick’s report is ridiculously one-sided. In today’s urban Pakistan, if you are into pop music, you cannot miss a band called “Laal” (Red). This band has drawn upon the traditions of the Pakistani poets of resistance and revolution: men like Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Habib Jalib and others, whose vision for Pakistan had little room for misogynistic Islamists. Laal is enjoying an explosion of popularity among the Pakistani urban youth. Putting a musical spin on the timeless poetry of Faiz, Laal declares boldly in one of their tracks:
“No more will any daughter of this country languish under the rule of the mullahs!”

Is that not opposition to Islamist militancy?

The Mekaal Hassan Band is one among several that have turned Sufi mystic poetry into modern music. Junoon, the band which started this trend and gained immense popularity, sing a message of love and tolerance which the wandering Sufi preachers taught to the masses of South Asia.

Some members of the Pakistani intelligentsia, in an attempt to live up to their version of secularism, have joined in the chorus of Western critics who conflate an absence of bands roaring “Die Taliban, die!” with a general lack of opposition to Islamic fundamentalism. Evidently, it is not enough that Pakistani musicians defy fundamentalists by singing and holding mass concerts. For Ellick, perhaps they must openly swear an oath of loyalty to the War on Terror, challenge individual Taliban leaders to shoot-outs and openly endorse the unpopular US bombing raids in north-western Pakistan.

So, what is it, apart from shoddy background research, which leads prominent American media sources to spew such mindless and misleading representations of Pakistani culture?

The first factor involved here is the need to blur the distinction between militant Wahaabi Islamists and other critics of US policy in this region. The message being given is that if it walks like a Pakistani Muslim and talks like a Pakistani Muslim (and happens to see US policy in this region as a huge problem) then it probably is a fanatic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, suicide-bomber Pakistani Muslim.

The Western mainstream media is not new to the business of selling racist stereotypes. It persists in irresponsible journalism because of the political climate of the US itself. In most countries, public opinion rarely bothers about the context and nuances of events taking place half a world away. Eqbal Ahmed noted that in order to sell a foreign colonial adventure, Western governments need two things: a ghost and a mission. American militarism follows this model to the letter: the ghost serves to frighten the public, the mission serves to unify political and military forces around the war effort.

From 1945 to 1990, every war launched in a faraway Third World country was justified using the ghost of communism and the mission of “containing” communism and protecting the Free World (represented by leaders such as Augusto Pinochet and Ngo Dinh Diem). Now the Cold War is over, but the Empire’s juggernaut must roll on. It needs new ghosts and new missions to go with them: from Serbian nationalists to Latin American drug-cartels.

In the region known to Obama as Af-Pak, the ghost is a vague, misty and amorphous enemy: Islamic fundamentalism. To the American public, this ghost is also known interchangeably as “al-Qaeda” and “Taliban”. If you move along the American political spectrum, somewhat towards the right of Obama, this ghost is popularly seen as a brown-skinned male, with wild hair and a messy beard, dressed in rags and a keffiyeh desert-scarf. The ghost carries an AK-47 and has a suicide-belt around its waist. The mission is just as vaguely defined as the ghost itself. It started out as an effort to nab Osama bin Laden. It then added the removal of the Taliban regime to its list of objectives and eventually developed into a counter-insurgency war against the resurgent Taliban. Bonus points were to be awarded for liberating Afghan women from their burqas and bringing true Democracy to the region. There was also this business of securing Central Asian energy reserves by ensuring a strategic foothold in Afghanistan…

With the mission going awry, Washington is now looking for a way out of this mess. Thrashing about wildly, trying to cut deals with “moderate” Taliban and desperately lashing out at Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Washington’s approach to this war is reminiscent of its previous imperialist adventures. The US paid a heavy price for trying to extend its Korean War into China. It succeeded in spilling over its lost war in Vietnam to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos, again with disastrous results. It now hopes to transfer the brunt of its war in Afghanistan onto Pakistan.

The rulers of Pakistan, be they military or civilian, have adopted the rhetoric and tactics of the War on Terror. It only remains to be seen if the delusions des grandeur of the Pakistani military (which it calls “strategic depth”) can be subordinated to American strategic aims in the region. As for the Pakistani masses, they are not too enthusiastic about jumping aboard America’s doomed War on Terror. After all, this is not the first time that Uncle Sam needs a “frontline state”.

It is in such a context that Ellick interviews popular Pakistani band Noori and is apparently shocked by their attitude. He just can’t seem to get over the fact that many Pakistanis would disagree with him on what is the biggest problem facing their society. He does not seem to have grasped the fact that most Pakistani people face problems which are much more immediate than the Taliban, and therefore might refuse to put a bunch of crackpot fanatics on top of their list of problems in life.

After all, what have these Pakistanis been smoking? Why don’t they realize that a few thousand armed militants in a country of 160 million are the biggest problem to sing about? Hunger, poverty, injustice, corruption: those issues are so 20th century, aren’t they?

Sarcasm aside, this brings us to another important point. It is true that a lot of young people in Pakistan have a tendency to look for silly xenophobic explanations for the troubles faced by their country today. Tariq Ali would call this the “anti-imperialism of fools”.

In Ellick’s video, popular vocalist Ali Azmat comes up with a tragically disjointed and confused explanation of the Taliban phenomenon in Pakistan. For him, it boils down to the infamous “foreign hand”. But his confusion is shared by hundreds of thousands of youth in urban Pakistan.

Now this is obviously not a nuanced analysis of US imperialism, socio-economic dependence and globalization. What Ali Azmat is saying is based on pure conspiracy theories, the purpose of which is to deflect anger away from the actual structures which keep our people subjugated, and direct that righteous wrath at “Indian agents”, “Jewish conspirators” and other such bogey-men from the imagination of Pakistan’s military rulers.

The military establishment and its mouth-pieces would like us to believe that they had nothing to do with the creation of the Taliban, that they never established dictatorships in this country which systematically placed our human and natural resources at the disposal of US imperialism, and that all of our problems today are the fault of “corrupt politicians” like President Zardari. And they also throw in a bit of anti-American posturing to gain cheap popularity, while hiding their actual subservience to Washington.

And a lot of younger people, including music sensations like Ali Azmat, swallow this propaganda completely.

Are these young people supportive of the Taliban, as Ellick and NFP and others would want us to believe?

Without looking at the social environment and psychology of our youth today, one can only come up with the kind of nonsense that Ellick produced in his report.

The main source of information for most young Pakistanis has been a conservative-populist Pakistani media, which is quick to cook up links between any social unrest in Pakistan and the machinations of RAW, the Indian intelligence agency. When you add to it an even more ridiculous link with the Israeli Mossad, the imaginary CIA-RAW-Mossad axis becomes a convenient way for the Pakistani state to explain away its own irresponsibility.

These conspiracy theories are peddled by most mainstream Pakistani TV channels and print media outlets. GEO, Express, Waqt and other TV channels take great delight in dishing out this nonsense. So do most local publications, with a few honorable exceptions. From Shahid Masood to Zaid Hamid: there is an endless stream of media personalities whose first question after any terrorist atrocity or separatist unrest is to ask:

“But what about the foreign hand?”

It is quite obvious what Ali Azmat was trying to do: i.e. to string together various phrases from various merchants of nonsense who he would have heard on TV or interacted with personally. His affinity for Zaid Hamid’s conspiracy theories is well-known, and he co-hosts one of his shows.

But to what extent can we blame our ill-informed youth? They show all the classical symptoms of a colonized, humiliated people, because that is what we Pakistanis are. In such circumstances, a young person grasps desperately for ideological straws to hold on to. A grand conspiracy of the CIA-Mossad-RAW kind becomes very attractive. The Pakistani education system doesn’t help either. It is geared towards producing engineers, clerks and executives for the corporate world. The social sciences, as taught in schools, are openly touted by the government as tools to convey the “Pakistan Ideology” to students.

All of this, however, does not translate into widespread sympathy for the Taliban. What it means is that we have a lot of young people who are having to engage with international and local realities which they do not understand, but which they desperately want an explanation for. And the best explanation they get, given their restricted worldview, is the one that windbags like Zaid Hamid can offer.

Considering that they have been through an educational system which purposefully limits and perverts the intellect, what can we expect from Pakistani students today, except to fall back on the only intellectual framework they were ever introduced to: the hotch-potch of religous rhetoric and hyper nationalism which the Pakistani state promotes?

In the absence of alternative discourses, what else will our youth say, except:

“India, America and the Jews dun it!”

But at this point, we must ask ourselves a few questions.

Does all of this mean that we stop voicing our opposition to the criminal policies imposed on the world from Washington?

When we distance ourselves from the obscurantist rants of the mullahs, shall we become native cheerleaders for the continued economic, political, cultural and military offensive against the Third World?

Shall we sing against the tyrants no more, just because the rants of fools are louder than voices of reason?

For one, its because I love the monsoon. The smell of rain, the pitter-patter, all that jazz. I know this sounds rather problematic, coming at a time when my country is drowning in the worst floods its ever seen. But yes, I love summer rain. Not winter rain, because it falls at the wrong time, and seeps in through your clothes and makes you feel miserable. Summer rain, on the other hand, makes me happy.

There was also a more immediate reason. I started this blog (in the sense that I created it on WordPress) on a rainy summer afternoon.

What am I going to write about here? Well, anything that I want to write about. I have had my fair share of tangos with the Pakistani media, and while the experience has been wonderful on the whole, I have to admit that nothing beats blogging.

Here I am free to say what I want, in what ever way I choose.