PAKISTAN’S CONFLICTED CLASSES — PART 10

Living Ahead of the Times

The events following the toppling of Imran Khan’s regime are still shedding light on partially understood truths around how ruling elites in failing nations like Pakistan, graft their developmental route. In that context, what was believed to be written in stone, turned out to be written in sand. For instance, development experts were fast despairing over the notion of changing national and cultural mindsets and decided to abandon them entirely.

Instead, they emphasized changing social habits and habitual behaviors. This is a proven phenomena when new products and services disrupt conventional behavior. The first-time use of refrigerators, tape-recorders and cars…then Mobile telephones, the use of internet, social media, computers and laptops…. produce radical changes. Improved forms of public transport, extensively networked modern highways linking cities and generating mobility of labor, and so on….all these alter space-time relationships. They impact to a great extent upon attitudes, too. Then followed the digitization of currency transactions, and information gathering and distribution via websites and Apps. It was assumed that the the Awam, when using them, would experience relationships, even transactional ones, differently. The change of deep mindsets would follow organically, without experimental interventions.

The ground realities proved to be conflicting. For one thing, all the new products, services, and infra-structures (although new to Pakistan), were familiar to the ruling elite. They have been representing the Global North’s economic and cultural reach before the birth of the country. They were well-traveled, had seen and lived them all in western capitals and could adopt the external features of international elite culture with relative ease. They did not have to try hard to blend in and appear natural and well-adjusted.

Indeed, “newness” in the form of modernity fitted them like a glove. They had been importing modernity privately for generations before them. The pedigreed among them evoked the ghost of colonialist traditions derived from former Nawabs who imported luxury items from Europe (crystal French chandeliers, Patek-Philip watches, Cartier jewellery, gleaming black sedans, cameras etc). These appeared in their lavish palaces a century before the common man set eyes on them. Perhaps it was the ruling elite’s way of displaying that they were “living ahead of their times” just like their colonial masters. More importantly, they claimed their rightful entitlement to modernity. Without it they would feel like grains of rice without husks: culturally deprived, less advanced, and as vulnerable as those they ruled over.

The Unblinking Truth

Contrast the above with the impact of new products and services upon “those they ruled over”, the common Awam (people, masses). They experienced true and tangible changes in habits, traditional and cultural practices. From the use of new kitchen-ware (electric and ovens), TV and dozens of channels, mobile phones, internet, digital maps, new highways, etc etc. the changes were swift and irreversible. Old relationships, transactions, social communication all underwent significant social disruptions in less than a single generation. Attitudes and behaviors changed palpably with new clothes, hairstyles and personal demeanors. A new generation of Awam was born whose children took such things for granted. Today, they relate to these new products and gadgets the same way as the ruling elite: with self-assertive pride. They suggest a sort of unspoken (though uninvited) “kinship” with their own educated ruling elite. They feel the same way towards them as Pakistan’s educated ruling elite feel towards the Global North: respect, reverence and an uncontrollable desire to be like them.

Nevertheless, for the Awam, this is a relatively new feeling, quite recent. It floods their hearts and minds like a sudden burst of water flowing through a barren desert, turning it green almost overnight. Take away the new products, services, infrastructure, the realities will revert to their old and familiar state of barrenness.

There is something striking, and tragically exceptional, in the way the educated ruling elite in Pakistan mistook the outer garments of modernity to be the driver of “inner change” right from the start. Unlike India, China, Turkey and other developing nations in the Global South, the national ruling elite ignored the truth staring unblinkingly at their faces: that the modernity they enjoyed, the advantages they derived and the self-betterment they experienced in their daily lives, owed their existence to the advanced knowledge of the Global North’s enterprising educated masses. They engineered the products and services that inspired such rapid post-industrial changes globally.

Countries like Japan, rose from the ashes to become the 2nd largest economic power (by the late 80’s) by simply acknowledging this truth and acting on it. They adapted their traditional practices by assimilating and owning more advanced knowledge to catch up with Global North’s knowledge-base. So did Turkey, China, India, and the “Asian Tigers”.

Pakistan’s established ruling elite, by contrast, maintained a stubborn, almost arrogant sense of self-entitlement to new products and services. It is as if the Global North owed them a continuous flow of sealed, packaged and delivered products and services on demand, in return for their life-long loyalty and blind solidarity for the Global North’s causes and agendas. Why would they need “advanced knowledge” when they could obtain its products and services as wages for bartering their national sovereignty to the Global North? So Pakistan’s ruling elite (with a few exceptions, of course) took to educating their children with very clear goals in mind i.e. to look, think, feel, and behave like their masters in order to (a)win their trust and confidence (b) plant the stakes of their future security in other lands.

With Knowledge Comes Power??

The need for knowledge acquisition slipped, like a faded yellow-sticky note, from their cork-board. One can run a country without any knowledge of self-governance just as one can drive a car without knowing the rules for driving on highways or inner-cities. The Pakistani elite, is used to offering (to their masters) and purchasing (from their servants) loyalties and services. They are easily deluded into believing that the oxygen of self-governance is wealth and power. Even quality education for their children can be purchased at the right price. So they turned a universal truth upside down: “With Power comes Knowledge”! Viewed from such an inverted perspective, education appeared redundant and teachers were (and still are) equated with lower-skilled workers like clerks and peons serving their “bosses”.

In essence, these attitudes have grown and spread like killer-weeds in a promising garden. They still remain central to the defining features of the ruling elite’s life, their political and social culture and their policies.

(To be continued, Part 11)

Copyright © September, 2023 Shad Moarif ALL RIGHTS RESERVED