The pursuit of national swagger

What is at the heart of human susceptibility to conspiracy theories or the oft-voracious appetite we sometimes see in society for rumour-mongering? Maybe it is just plain ignorance.
Not knowing or ignorance is so deceptively disempowering that human beings develop defence mechanisms against it. One common defence mechanism against ignorance is to feign knowledge, to create facts and to speculate about people’s motives. We use conspiracy theories and rumours to explain things that we don’t know enough about, or don’t understand.
Of course, these are not natural responses for the human mind. Human nature has a record going back thousands of years that demonstrates a successful and sustained quest for knowledge. We are defined, not by lazy speculation, but by industrious inquiry. Abraham’s own journey and the subsequent monotheistic Abrahamic traditions confirm man’s nature, as do the broad spectrum of other religions and normative frameworks. The Islamic traditions highlight the centrality of the capacity to reflect, and to yearn for knowledge, as man’s primary distinguishing feature. Mankind’s enormous scientific progress and its spiritual quest for a sense of purpose in the larger universe are both fruits of this unique natural human attribute. Man is the anti-ignorant.
The Arabic word for ignorance is jahilliya. It is a term loaded with political, social and spiritual meaning. Islam’s most immediate purpose was to act as a framework for man’s anti-jahilliya nature. Countering ignorance has fuelled Muslim history in myriads of ways, some orthodox, mechanical and rather plain, others unorthodox and flush with colour and vitality. Closer to home, countering ignorance is what informed the vision of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the poetry of Allama Mohammed Iqbal and the rhythm of a thousand years of Pakistan’s glorious spiritual traditions, from Abdullah Shah Ghazi, Bhittai and Bulleh to Bari Imam and Rehman Baba. The Pakistani DNA has an intimate anthropological linkage with the negation of ignorance.
A national appetite to know what Pakistan’s military and political leaders are doing is a legitimate area of inquiry for Pakistanis. In a democracy, this is not just a legitimate area, but a necessary element of a broad, participatory polity. However it is worth reflecting upon what actually constitutes a productive line of questioning, and what constitutes a destructive habit of highly personalised shouting matches.
These are not issues unique to Pakistan. Ignorance and the destructive appetite for shouting, name-calling and spurious speculation have helped propel television news networks, like Fox News, around the world to the status of oracles, endowed with the power to make and break political careers. It is hard to take the singling out of Pakistan seriously in a world where agents of intolerance, like Newt Gingrich and Subramaniam Swamy lead major political parties in the world’s supposedly freest and most secular countries.
Yet, the malfeasance of others is no excuse for our own. Pakistanis have an individual and collective responsibility to reflect upon whether we are fulfilling our natural function – as human beings, as citizens of a big and dangerous world, and as the case may be, as the followers of Abraham. A quick survey of the instances in which ignorant mobs have set upon and extinguished the lives of innocent people, from all faiths, suggests there is a long way to go.
The extent to which we are able to construct a society based on inquiry and knowledge depends on whether we are prepared to acknowledge our natural state as rejectors of ignorance.
Recent times of crises in our national security threat perception often elicit appeals to Pakistan’s role as a fortress of Islam. The question is what kind of fortress really represents a true ode to Pakistan’s intellectual and spiritual traditions. A fortress is constituted of fortification, of strength. In the Pakistan of Iqbal’s dreams real strength is the strength that comes from a symbiosis between belief and knowledge. Imaan (or faith) is a less stringent and taxing state of being than the state of yaqeen (or belief). Belief is one’s faith informed by the conviction of knowing. Belief is the swagger of the faithful, upon having rejected ignorance.
Without the instrumental addition of knowledge to faith, we risk having to make it all up, to conjure conspiracy theories and to fashion rumours. That false swagger is dangerous. It is bravado that is unsubstantiated. If we are to be truly strong, to really be a fortress, our bravado has to have legs, and arms. But most importantly, it has to have the thing that distinguishes us from all other creatures. It has to have brains.
This has very clear implications. If we want to be endowed with real swagger, the pursuit of knowledge needs to become a national obsession of the same feverish pitch that awaits the pronouncements of the little sage birds that predict our political and military leaders’ next moves.
Luckily, there are acres of space for such change in modern day Pakistan. The sound and fury generated by events like the PNS Mehran attack or the Nato airstrikes are not manufactured outrages. They reflect a collective hunger for a much improved sense of national dignity. Pakistanis want to have a real swagger. The sometimes contemptuous treatment of this sentiment, by caricaturing the notion of “ghairat”, may not be the best course of action. The challenge is not to reject the appetite for dignity, but to inform it with real substance – knowledge.
We need not look far to find answers. The immediate implication for Pakistan is an urgent treatment of the desperate state of education. There cannot be any discussion of a brighter future without an expressed and demonstrable commitment to getting almost 40 million out of school kids into school, and making sure they are learning.
What may surprise many of us is how serious a step in that direction we’ve already taken. The maligned political class, and the very same democracy that gets labelled dysfunctional at the first signs of trouble, recently produced the 18th Amendment. While we were obsessing over many less important details of the amendment, these same politicians inserted Article 25-A in the Constitution, making education free and compulsory for all children between five and 16. Real results are a fair distance in the future, but at least the road is defined.
Similar roads need to be defined in a range of areas of national interest – the national interest that matters to the lives of women, children, minorities and the poor. They won’t be defined unless we begin to reject the fruits of ignorance. The path to a dignified and strong Pakistan is through the growth of a public discourse grounded in inquiry and knowledge. This is both the legacy of a glorious intellectual and spiritual history, and a bright and dignified future.

P.S. This piece marks the beginning of my taking an indefinite break from writing this column, to take up a position in government. I am grateful to my editors at The News for having afforded me the opportunity to speak through these pages, and readers who have tirelessly provided excellent feedback.

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.