Peeping into people’s minds

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

We essentially live in a compartmentalised society. The compartments have at best only slit windows and many of us prefer not to look through them into other areas. Lives are essentially cut off, with only a limited cross over between the various segments of society.

This is not entirely unnatural. All humans, except in situations where there is no choice, make decisions on the basis of shared ideas, thinking, interests and the complex web of associations that draw people together.

This natural pattern of social behaviour is determined within our specific social setup too by the especially marked class divides that have been exacerbated over the years. The divide holds pitfalls, but there are other drawbacks too which extend beyond social inequity and a yawning wealth gap.

The problem also is that with the gap comes a growing lack of shared thinking and shared mindset. It also means a lack of understanding of how others interpret the world – and consequently a lack of comprehension about the space we inhabit or the manner in which we are perceived within it. This in so many ways complicates our reality.

Let’s take the matter of attitudes towards women. At just one public event in Lahore, held at DHA, women clearly were regarded as second class citizens, accommodated only as a kind of particular favour to them. There were constant demands that female guests make room for more important male ‘guests’, usually uniformed men, and some question raised over the degree of interaction permissible between the genders.

But of course we are in many ways accustomed to all this. The most alarming aspect is that the status of women or the expected quality of respect for even elderly women seems to have gone down. If things could go a certain way, or according to certain people, it would perhaps be preferred that they be seen or heard as little as possible in public spaces. The question of where these approaches stem from is something to consider. They have clearly changed over the years.

To a certain degree at least, edicts from our clerics and from essentially irrelevant, archaic bodies such as the Council on Islamic Ideology (CII) have contributed to the manner in which essentially ordinary people think. It is not just men who follow this line; women too in many ways have chosen to conform and not argue against what is quite open discrimination.

It is easy to judge the degree to which similar attitudes relating to minorities or other groups have filtered through into the depths of society. More and more people appear to believe that non-Muslims are in some ways inferior.

A recent survey at a school suggested that Grade 8 children thought that the country’s Christians were not equal citizens under Pakistani law and there have been a frightening number of cases reported in which children belonging to different ethnic or religious groups have effectively been driven out of schools, and in some cases the country, because they do not ‘fit in’. The rainbow vision of Pakistan that its founder appeared to hold has vanished, leaving behind a dull gray.

The real problem though is that we are doing very little to tackle this. The media plays a role in building on stereotypes, both through its entertainment shows and what is called current affairs programming. In fact, attempts to highlight social problems have repeatedly been deemed ‘immoral’, in moves that further deter channels from airing such material.

In an environment where the media is increasingly powerful, this is a dangerous development. We have no effective counterview in a situation where very few read and an even smaller number is given the opportunity to hear other perspectives or to engage in any discussion or debate about them.

From the sermons of mosques, in the content of school textbooks and everything else, the same line of thought is repeated over and over again. It is not easy to assess the impact it is having on everyday life. But this impact becomes visible on specific occasions when the compartmentalised social groups interact or attempt to do so. The mindset of one comes as a shock to the other – and we all know which mindset is in the majority.

If we are to continue to talk about battling extremism and the violence that comes with it, we need also to talk about thinking. Perhaps most notably in urban centres, it has become seriously skewed. Culture has been twisted to represent thoughts which were not the norm a few generations ago. The same is true of religion.

While the National Action Plan launched after the Army Public School massacre of 2014 took up this matter, nothing has effectively happened to alter the picture. Changing pre-painted canvases is of course not an easy task. It requires the removal of thickly layered oil paint through meticulous effort and then a new motif, or symbol, or image painted over it. How this is to happen is the challenge we need to take up.

At present, it seems that the mindset which places women in a particular category, minorities in others, the less wealthy in yet another and continues similar sub-divisions across society is becoming increasingly prevalent. Those who hold it of course do not consciously believe there is anything wrong with what they think or do. They also seem bewildered by the idea that their views may somehow run contrary to the constitution of Pakistan or the basic foundations on which it was built.

The tools required to change this must include a deliberate effort to bring more moderate religious scholars to the forefront so that they can effectively counter ideas that are turning our society into an increasingly austere place, which retains less and less room for groups that are traditionally not prominent within it.

To achieve this, we need also to look at our past and the fact that our country was once upon a time a quite different place. School syllabus is of course another key, but this can become useful only if the teachers imparting the ideas and the content are themselves convinced that it is true. When they have doubts, these will come across to the oung minds they teach.

The effort must be to remove as many doubts as possible. We need to be clear that Pakistan is a country in which women and minorities are equal citizens. We need to be clear that misogynist tendencies that suggest women be treated as inferior beings be pushed aside and perhaps even penalised.

There needs to be a common view that the only way forward is to bring about greater unity within society and demolish or at least create larger windows in the compartments that exist. This will require a degree of reconstruction and a degree of redevelopment.

But this work of renovation has to take place before the mindset we see everywhere is clad still more firmly in layers of iron from which we cannot break free and which shackle down an entire society, turning it into an increasingly hostile place for many who live within it.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com