Pakistan’s Islamified monoculture
Defining culture, in a precise manner, is impossible. I find Leon Trotsky’s definition of culture fairly useful.
‘Culture is all that has been created, built, assimilated and achieved by man throughout the course of his entire history, in contrast with what has been given by nature,’ he says. From the time man began to use tools and separated himself from animal kingdom, according to Trotsky, ‘the creation and accumulation of culture began, that is, of all kinds of knowledge and skill in the struggle with nature in order to pacify nature’.
In Trotsky’s description, accumulated culture has a material form: tools, machines, buildings, monuments. However, there is an even important immaterial form as well. According to Trotsky, ‘the most valuable part of culture consists of its deposits in the consciousness of man himself – our devices, customs, skills, and acquired capabilities which grew out of all preceding material culture and, while resting upon it, continue to rebuild it’. Where does the culture spring from? Trotsky’s reply: ‘culture grows out of man's struggle with nature for existence, for the improvements of living conditions, for the increase of his power’ (1).
However, in the context of subject under discussion, the following definition by Jeremy Seabrook is also relevant. He views culture in two ways. ‘One suggests a particular way of life, of a people, a group, and includes every aspect of that life - its social and moral structures, its division of labour, its domestic arrangements, and relationships between people. The second refers to the works and practices of artistic and intellectual activity – music, literature, painting, and scholarship’ (Jeremy 2004: 5).
Now imagine the situation in Pakistan. Literature was a mainstay of Pakistan’s cultural expression for two reasons. Firstly, performing arts were never sanctified by religious czars. Theatre, music, film etc were against the tenets of Islam despite commanding mass audiences. An underlying Islamified disapproval, in general, has marked the debate in Pakistan over performing arts. Secondly, poetry, being a popular form of artistic, cultural and political expression, attracted more talent. The left, in particular, galvanized this front in an organized manner. However, not merely has book culture disappeared, also literary activities and such sites as Lahore’s Pak Tea House have disappeared. Organisations such as Halqa Arbab-e-Zouq or the re-founded Progressive Writers Association are not even a shadow of their past. Go to a book store, you will not find the works of Krishan Chander, Bedi and Khalil Gibran. Until the 1980s, they were among the best selling writers. What have we now? Baba Yahya, a self-styled Sufi who claims his books are on top of best-selling lists because even the djins read them. Ashfaq Ahmed and Bano Apa, Nasim Hijazi, Javed Chaudhry, and Dr Shahid Masood dominate the book stores. All of them sell one reactionary version of Islam or the other.
Likewise, the film industry has breathed its last. Until the early 1990s, Pakistan was among the top-ten film producing countries, almost on a par with Brazil. It was producing a hundred films a year. True, the quality of the films was often questionable. However, it was a popular entertainment. Celebrated film stars occupied an important place in public sphere and mass consciousness. One may also blame the film industry for many self-inflicted wounds. But in a society where Salafi Islam is being radically embraced, a ‘vulga’ cultural expression could not breathe any longer. One may cite the recent Emmy and not-so-recent Oscar for Pakistani productions as a sign of revival. But I do not consider them Pakistani productions. These documentaries and features winning international awards are meant for the global gaze and film fairs. Paradoxically, a dying film industry in Lahore, in recent years, produced ‘Aik Or Ghazi’ (2), a film glorifying the killer of a blasphemy accused. Meantime, an increasing number of former film stars has joined the Tablighee Jamaat.
The culture of sports has embraced death. Squash and land hockey were not merely popular sports, Pakistani stars were performing enviously internationally in these sports. Such sports as wrestling, football, kabadi, swimming and athletics would also attract the youth. In the evenings and during the weekends, play-grounds were over-crowded. No more. While sporting facilities have disappeared as well, whatever spaces are available, offer a deserted look. Cricket is the only surviving sport. Members of the national cricket eleven spend more time on Tablighi missions then their net practice. Most of them wear their religion on their sleeves. Separating cricketing culture from religion is not possible anymore.
Music has progressively disappeared from individual and collective life experiences. At cafes, restaurants, public busses, and wedding parties, songs blaring out of electronic instruments would make an otherwise difficult life, a bit bearable. Former pop stars have all become Naat Khwans. Ironically, they are making more money as Naat Khwans. Those still in the business of music, they have to rely on Indian market.
Even science and astronomy (astronomy at least for moon-sighting), let alone text books and public ceremonies, have to be endorsed by mullahs. On television, which has effectively dominated public and private discourses in the last decade, one finds a mullah offering his opinion on economy, politics, constitution, science, culture, international relations, war, peace, women reproductive complications, you name it.
Religion, in its Wahabified form, has become Pakistan’s monoculture.
Exploring monoculture with F. S. Michaels:
By monoculture, F S Michaels (2011) implies a hegemonic master-narrative. ‘The governing pattern that a culture obeys is a master story – one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture… When that single story becomes our only story, a monoculture emerges’ (Michaels 2011: 1-131). Inside this metanarrative, at a given time, one tends to accept its definition of reality. ‘You unconsciously believe and act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other things it’s able to direct us without us knowing too much about it’. It is like an ‘invisible foundation’ that ‘shapes our ideas about what’s normal’. A monoculture doesn’t mean that everyone believes exactly the same thing or acts in exactly the same way, but that we end up sharing key beliefs and assumptions that direct our lives (Ibid).
Let me quote excerpts of Michaels’ theory (2011:1-6) at length:
The governing pattern that a culture obeys is a master story – one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture. When you ‘re inside a master story at a particular time in history, you tend to accept its definition of reality. You unconsciously believe and act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other things. That’s the power of the monoculture; it’s able to direct us without us knowing too much about it.
While Michaels has described the monoculture under the tyranny of capitalism [‘In our time, the economic culture is economic’, she says], but it miraculously resonates with Pakistan’s religious monoculture:
Over time, the monoculture evolves into a nearly invisible foundation that structures and shapes our lives, giving us our sense of how the world works. It shapes our ideas about what’s normal and what we can expect from life. It channels our lives in a certain direction, setting out strict boundaries that we unconsciously learn to live inside. It teaches us to fear and distrust other stories; other stories challenge the monoculture simply by existing, by representing alternate possibilities. As a result, learning to see monoculture can leave us feeling threatened and anxious because the process exposes our foundations, outlines the “why” of why we live the way we do.
The last sentences of the above paragraph explain our intolerance for religious minorities, Baloch and Sindhi nationalists as well as atheists, Muslim reformers, liberalism and socialism.
Still, if we fail to understand how the monoculture shapes our lives and our world, we’re at risk of making decisions day after day without ever really understanding how our choices are being predetermined, without understanding the monoculture even shapes what we think our options are. Without a clear understanding of the monoculture, it’s hard to understand the trajectory of our own life. But once you know what shared beliefs and assumptions make up the governing pattern at this point in history, you can discover the consequences of the monoculture and decide if that’s how really want to live.
Precisely, at this juncture, an escape route from monoculture shows up. However, the source of escape is not mere individual agency. There is a concrete basis. She points out:
Monocultures, though overwhelmingly persuasive and pervasive, aren’t inescapable. In the end, the human experience always diverges from the monoculture and its master story, because our humanity is never as one-dimensional as the master story says it is. The human experience is always wider and deeper than a single narrative, and over time, we become hungry for something the monoculture isn’t speaking to and isn’t giving us – can’t give us. Once you know what the monoculture looks, you can decide whether it serves a useful purpose in your life, or whether you want to transcend it and live in a wider spectrum of human values instead – to know it so you can leave it behind.
However, as activists, our job is not to sit passively and wait endlessly. French revolutionary Danial Bensaid, who died a few years ago, thinks that during trying times, revolutionaries should engage in “an active waiting, an urgent patience, an endurance and a perseverance that are the opposite of passive waiting for a miracle”.
Let us actively resist the monoculture while waiting for the contradictions to sharpen!
Notes and bibliography:
(1) This essay is included in this issue. See our section: Pak Tea House
(2) It was reviewed in Viewpoint: http://www.viewpointonline.net/2014/02/aik-aur-ghazi/881-aik-aur-ghazi
Michaels, F.S. (2011) Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything. Red Clover Press
Seabrook, Jeremy (2004) Globalization and Local Lives. Oxford: New Internationalist.
‘Culture is all that has been created, built, assimilated and achieved by man throughout the course of his entire history, in contrast with what has been given by nature,’ he says. From the time man began to use tools and separated himself from animal kingdom, according to Trotsky, ‘the creation and accumulation of culture began, that is, of all kinds of knowledge and skill in the struggle with nature in order to pacify nature’.
In Trotsky’s description, accumulated culture has a material form: tools, machines, buildings, monuments. However, there is an even important immaterial form as well. According to Trotsky, ‘the most valuable part of culture consists of its deposits in the consciousness of man himself – our devices, customs, skills, and acquired capabilities which grew out of all preceding material culture and, while resting upon it, continue to rebuild it’. Where does the culture spring from? Trotsky’s reply: ‘culture grows out of man's struggle with nature for existence, for the improvements of living conditions, for the increase of his power’ (1).
However, in the context of subject under discussion, the following definition by Jeremy Seabrook is also relevant. He views culture in two ways. ‘One suggests a particular way of life, of a people, a group, and includes every aspect of that life - its social and moral structures, its division of labour, its domestic arrangements, and relationships between people. The second refers to the works and practices of artistic and intellectual activity – music, literature, painting, and scholarship’ (Jeremy 2004: 5).
Now imagine the situation in Pakistan. Literature was a mainstay of Pakistan’s cultural expression for two reasons. Firstly, performing arts were never sanctified by religious czars. Theatre, music, film etc were against the tenets of Islam despite commanding mass audiences. An underlying Islamified disapproval, in general, has marked the debate in Pakistan over performing arts. Secondly, poetry, being a popular form of artistic, cultural and political expression, attracted more talent. The left, in particular, galvanized this front in an organized manner. However, not merely has book culture disappeared, also literary activities and such sites as Lahore’s Pak Tea House have disappeared. Organisations such as Halqa Arbab-e-Zouq or the re-founded Progressive Writers Association are not even a shadow of their past. Go to a book store, you will not find the works of Krishan Chander, Bedi and Khalil Gibran. Until the 1980s, they were among the best selling writers. What have we now? Baba Yahya, a self-styled Sufi who claims his books are on top of best-selling lists because even the djins read them. Ashfaq Ahmed and Bano Apa, Nasim Hijazi, Javed Chaudhry, and Dr Shahid Masood dominate the book stores. All of them sell one reactionary version of Islam or the other.
Likewise, the film industry has breathed its last. Until the early 1990s, Pakistan was among the top-ten film producing countries, almost on a par with Brazil. It was producing a hundred films a year. True, the quality of the films was often questionable. However, it was a popular entertainment. Celebrated film stars occupied an important place in public sphere and mass consciousness. One may also blame the film industry for many self-inflicted wounds. But in a society where Salafi Islam is being radically embraced, a ‘vulga’ cultural expression could not breathe any longer. One may cite the recent Emmy and not-so-recent Oscar for Pakistani productions as a sign of revival. But I do not consider them Pakistani productions. These documentaries and features winning international awards are meant for the global gaze and film fairs. Paradoxically, a dying film industry in Lahore, in recent years, produced ‘Aik Or Ghazi’ (2), a film glorifying the killer of a blasphemy accused. Meantime, an increasing number of former film stars has joined the Tablighee Jamaat.
The culture of sports has embraced death. Squash and land hockey were not merely popular sports, Pakistani stars were performing enviously internationally in these sports. Such sports as wrestling, football, kabadi, swimming and athletics would also attract the youth. In the evenings and during the weekends, play-grounds were over-crowded. No more. While sporting facilities have disappeared as well, whatever spaces are available,
Music has progressively disappeared from individual and collective life experiences. At cafes, restaurants, public busses, and wedding parties, songs blaring out of electronic instruments would make an otherwise difficult life, a bit bearable. Former pop stars have all become Naat Khwans. Ironically, they are making more money as Naat Khwans. Those still in the business of music, they have to rely on Indian market.
Even science and astronomy (astronomy at least for moon-sighting), let alone text books and public ceremonies, have to be endorsed by mullahs. On television, which has effectively dominated public and private discourses in the last decade, one finds a mullah offering his opinion on economy, politics, constitution, science, culture, international relations, war, peace, women reproductive complications, you name it.
Religion, in its Wahabified form, has become Pakistan’s monoculture.
Exploring monoculture with F. S. Michaels:
By monoculture, F S Michaels (2011) implies a hegemonic master-narrative. ‘The governing pattern that a culture obeys is a master story – one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture… When that single story becomes our only story, a monoculture emerges’ (Michaels 2011: 1-131). Inside this metanarrative, at a given time, one tends to accept its definition of reality. ‘You unconsciously believe and act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other things it’s able to direct us without us knowing too much about it’. It is like an ‘invisible foundation’ that ‘shapes our ideas about what’s normal’. A monoculture doesn’t mean that everyone believes exactly the same thing or acts in exactly the same way, but that we end up sharing key beliefs and assumptions that direct our lives (Ibid).
Let me quote excerpts of Michaels’ theory (2011:1-6) at length:
The governing pattern that a culture obeys is a master story – one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture. When you ‘re inside a master story at a particular time in history, you tend to accept its definition of reality. You unconsciously believe and act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other things. That’s the power of the monoculture; it’s able to direct us without us knowing too much about it.
While Michaels has described the monoculture under the tyranny of capitalism [‘In our time, the economic culture is economic’, she says], but it miraculously resonates with Pakistan’s religious monoculture:
Over time, the monoculture evolves into a nearly invisible foundation that structures and shapes our lives, giving us our sense of how the world works. It shapes our ideas about what’s normal and what we can expect from life. It channels our lives in a certain direction, setting out strict boundaries that we unconsciously learn to live inside. It teaches us to fear and distrust other stories; other stories challenge the monoculture simply by existing, by representing alternate possibilities. As a result, learning to see monoculture can leave us feeling threatened and anxious because the process exposes our foundations, outlines the “why” of why we live the way we do.
The last sentences of the above paragraph explain our intolerance for religious minorities, Baloch and Sindhi nationalists as well as atheists, Muslim reformers, liberalism and socialism.
Still, if we fail to understand how the monoculture shapes our lives and our world, we’re at risk of making decisions day after day without ever really understanding how our choices are being predetermined, without understanding the monoculture even shapes what we think our options are. Without a clear understanding of the monoculture, it’s hard to understand the trajectory of our own life. But once you know what shared beliefs and assumptions make up the governing pattern at this point in history, you can discover the consequences of the monoculture and decide if that’s how really want to live.
Precisely, at this juncture, an escape route from monoculture shows up. However, the source of escape is not mere individual agency. There is a concrete basis. She points out:
Monocultures, though overwhelmingly persuasive and pervasive, aren’t inescapable. In the end, the human experience always diverges from the monoculture and its master story, because our humanity is never as one-dimensional as the master story says it is. The human experience is always wider and deeper than a single narrative, and over time, we become hungry for something the monoculture isn’t speaking to and isn’t giving us – can’t give us. Once you know what the monoculture looks, you can decide whether it serves a useful purpose in your life, or whether you want to transcend it and live in a wider spectrum of human values instead – to know it so you can leave it behind.
However, as activists, our job is not to sit passively and wait endlessly. French revolutionary Danial Bensaid, who died a few years ago, thinks that during trying times, revolutionaries should engage in “an active waiting, an urgent patience, an endurance and a perseverance that are the opposite of passive waiting for a miracle”.
Let us actively resist the monoculture while waiting for the contradictions to sharpen!
Notes and bibliography:
(1) This essay is included in this issue. See our section: Pak Tea House
(2) It was reviewed in Viewpoint: http://www.viewpointonline.net/2014/02/aik-aur-ghazi/881-aik-aur-ghazi
Michaels, F.S. (2011) Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything. Red Clover Press
Seabrook, Jeremy (2004) Globalization and Local Lives. Oxford: New Internationalist.