The News on Sunday (TNS): Civil society is a loose term and, whatever the academic definition, in Pakistan’s context, the foreign funded NGO/development sector or the left-wing groups independent of the state, with a pro-poor agenda, are effectively considered to be members of the civil society. Do you see any problem with this formulation and what all does it leave out?

Haris Gazdar (HG): It is literally what you want it to be. In Pakistan it is taken to mean exactly what you have said. But the left-wing association is incidental, because people defining civil society tend to hold left-wing views. Under communist rule in eastern Europe, civil society referred to pro-capitalist groups who organised for greater freedoms and civil rights.

The important thing in the definition is that it is not the state, not the church or religious establishment, it is not political party, it consists of citizens’ groups and associations that are voluntary and non-parochial (in the sense that they are not based primarily on kinship ties), it consists of loose coalitions or even unconnected groups or individuals, which may or may not come together for any cause.

Some who study the civil society are happy to define it as passive, i.e. ‘the civil society’ is merely a residual category whose constituents do not have to subscribe to any particular values for them to be classified as part of civil society.

Others are interested in definitions that focus on more active networks -- potential platforms for collective action on social or political matters -- even social movements.

Marx and Gramsci thought that civil society is a characteristic of (mostly secular) bourgeois society with its formal separation of social, political and economic spheres, and is bourgeois implicitly or explicitly in its outlook. So, even if it is not overtly organised and political, the civil society is basically bourgeois. Gramsci was particularly pessimistic, in the context of Italian fascism, in the democratic potential of the civil society.

Since then things have moved on and there is greater openness with respect to the potential of the civil society (in contrast with political organisations) in pursuing and achieving democratic advances -- but perhaps bourgeois democratic only.

In Pakistan, the theoretical framework will have to be extended because it is a capitalist economy with many features that differ from classical capitalism or the conventional bourgeois society. This is mostly due to the colonial origin of the Pakistani state, society and economy.

The fact that much of what would be civic space is occupied by parochial or religious organisations means that classical civil society is, in effect, restricted to those groups and networks, which have an overt secular orientation. Hence, the association with left-wing values. But we don’t really have to limit ourselves to classical definitions if we know how our situation might differ from the classical one. My own view is that there are several civil societies in Pakistan and not one, and each corresponds roughly with the notion of individual and community that various segments of society uphold.

There is probably an Islamist civil society, and a secular civil society, and even various ethnic civil societies, and active overlaps between them. I have a hunch that there was a left civil society until the early 1980s, which was systematically demolished by a combination of the military and Jamaat-e-Islami under Zia, but that, like much else, is yet speculative.

Also read: A contested idea

TNS: The lack of protection for NGOs, the inability of the state to protect civil society members and the growing intolerance of their neutral stance has affected some of the development work campaign. Has the civil society been instrumental in bringing about change in the recent years? How would you assess its impact?

HG: There is a question about the ability of the state to protect various groups, and then its ability to attack various groups. The state is weak as an organisation in general, and seems to fail in protecting even those individuals that form its core. There have been attacks on political leaders and military officers. Even if we argue that the state is fragmented and that its security arm sees itself as autonomous from its representative body, we need to acknowledge the security arm’s inability to protect itself.

The horrendous attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar was as clear a sign of this failure or inability. In fact, just as there are these other various civil societies in Pakistan, there is oddly, a military civil society. There are entire social associations and networks that are not formally part of the military but are nevertheless closely associated with it. So, even the security state is unable to protect its ‘own’ civil society -- what to speak of the ‘civil’ state protecting other segments of the civil society.

But don’t forget that the attackers also belong to arm factions of various civil societies. If you have patience with my view of multiple civil societies, including an Islamist, then some of its more extreme fringes constitute groups that carry out attacks on polio workers and those who defend individuals accused of blasphemy.

The liberal-secular civil society rightly expects formal institutions of the state to provide it protection, and in fact, it is on the very promise of such protection that the liberal-secular civil society is founded. Others make their own arrangements for protection.  Of course, it is a terrible situation, but that is what it is.

TNS: In what concrete ways has new media (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc) helped develop and consolidate civil society in Pakistan?

HG: Social media help all civil societies in Pakistan, and since some of these civil societies come into conflict with others, I don’t know what the final score is for the liberal-secular civil society. There are certainly much greater avenues for connecting meaningfully with the global civil society (which is mostly liberal-secular) if they wished to do so. There are also opportunities to put the point across that the future, ultimately (which can be a long time away) belongs to the liberal-secular civil society, simply because it is associated with material, scientific and moral advances, genocides notwithstanding.