The fading of distant glimmer

thenews.com.pk/print/163723-The-fading-of-distant-glimmer

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

There is a certain sense of hope that keeps driving us on, from one day to the next, from
one week to the other, as we look on at images from the latest carnage, the latest act of
slaughter, the latest act of violence against a woman, a non-Muslim or other citizen.
We hope that in time our country will move to a place which is less dark and into which
the sun shines more freely, lighting up the shadows and breaking up the happiness.
But how will this happen? Clearly an armed battle against militants is not enough. How
many can we kill, and the failure to conduct open trials visible to people, complicates
matters in many ways. What we also need to do is wage a battle against mindsets,
against established patterns of thinking. This of course is much harder than gunning down
enemies or razing villages. In some cases at least such policies simply lead to the
creation of new militants, young men determined to avenge the death of fathers or
brothers. It is therefore essential that the strategy involving guns be combined with a
broader set of tactics.
This is hard to achieve when there is support for militants from the top, with reports
emerging of suggestions from the military establishment that the Taliban somehow be
mainstreamed and brought into the system. To some degree, this will have to be
achieved. The young men with guns who act as agents of the Taliban in tribal areas and
other parts cannot of course be simply mowed down. Those who can be rehabilitated
must be provided the opportunity to acquire skills useful in regular life so that they can
integrate once more into their societies and villages.
But militants and militant leaders guilty of crime or pushed to a point where their hard-line
positions makes reform impossible need to be penalised under the law not in
encounters, not necessarily in armed action but in the courts of law. These courts of law
should essentially become the place where the battle against militancy is fought and
argued through and put openly before people.
Amidst all the conflicting ideologies, they have a right to determine whether they seek a
country where a certain pattern of thinking is imposed by force and attempts made to
establish a different kind of State dominated by religion or a particular interpretation of
Islamic law, or a country run under a Constitution and along the patterns envisaged by its
founder when the decision was first taken to partition the subcontinent.
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Practically speaking, the problem is that militants, or groups within the militant movement,
have support from powerful places within the country. We all know about this, and about
linkages with the military establishment and also governments during different eras.
Official funding for seminaries, support for specific groups or their leaders even when
these leaders are mass murderers and talks with ultra hard-line clerics who wish to
overthrow the current system do not open up the doors for the suggestion of reform and a
true transformation of the way people think.
This thinking has become very important indeed. It applies not just to militancy but also to
the manner in which thought and ideas have been moulded to fit patterns regarding
women, minority groups and others who for various reasons stand somewhere outside the
mainstream of what is becoming a misogynist and increasingly ugly society. Yes, we have
a new bill passed by our parliament on honour killings and rape. But this does not change
the fact that even educated, privileged men forming the elite of society appear to believe
the rights of men are superior to those of women, regardless of the fact that women form
50 percent of the population of Pakistan.
The expressions of these views can be heard in many social settings, in classrooms, on
television talk shows and at many other places. One manifestation has been the slander
of Bilawal Bhutto, and the constant reference to him as someone who acts like a woman.
Sexuality, of course, is a very delicate question in Pakistan. It should also be an entirely
personal one. But even if we look quite beyond this, comparing a man who cries after
witnessing the aftermath of a carnage in which young men have been taken away from
their families forever or talks about the situation of mothers and children, with a woman is
an example of how twisted our society has become and how it continues to warp further
and further.
Suggesting someone is like a woman counts as an insult in our culture. This essentially
puts down the 95 million or so citizens of Pakistan who happen to be female in terms of
gender. They deserve not to be ridiculed; a man deserves not to be made a target for
ribald jokes because he displays traits of sensitivity usually associated with women. Of
course, we have every right to judge politics and policies as we please. But we should
counter the tradition of seeing women as inferior, laughing at men who in any way appear
to resemble them or do not show the machoism we have come to admire and see as the
norm.
In the same way, it is unacceptable to mock people on the basis of their race or ethnicity.
At a broader level, men must be allowed the freedom to develop all aspects of their
character. President Barack Obama has been known to weep in public; no one seemed to
see this as especially reprehensible.
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There is then much to be achieved in terms of dealing with what fits in to the minds of
people everywhere. This includes leaders at the government and military levels, people
who influence the thinking of others including teachers, community leaders, activists and
mosque clerics and also the millions whom we term ordinary people who adhere to a
specific mindset in most cases. This mindset, in some of its aspects, has been there for
generations. In others, it appears to be a more recent creation, stemming from the specific
chain of events that have taken place in our country and region.
We can only win against militancy if we are able to defeat this mindset. To do so, we must
replace it with a truly open mechanism of thought. This can best be achieved through the
curriculum, although the fact that teachers, whether male or female, themselves hold a
specific pattern of thought deep within them makes this difficult.
The media also comes in in a big way. It needs to play a part in shaping opinions in a
different direction, as a way for setting the compass towards the future that we do seek.
We need to be clear at all levels what future this is and what it comprises. Only when
there is unanimity on this can we hope for anything resembling real change.
Mere rhetoric or the gunning down of people who have formed private militias and
embarked on a mission to kill specific groups or establish their own writ in the name of a
particular ideology will not achieve this. The change needs to be much wider and it can be
brought about only if every institute and state plays a part in building it brick by brick and
layer by layer.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com

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